


A Graveyard For Lunatics

by Chaed, spacelaska



Series: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Addiction, Adult Content, Adult Language, Angst, BAMF Pepper Potts, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Cause that's what this is, Cheating, Explicit Sexual Content, Food Issues, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, POV Bruce Banner, POV Multiple, POV Pepper Potts, POV Steve Rogers, POV Tony Stark, Pepperony - Freeform, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Pepper Potts, Road Trips, Ronin Clint Barton, SHIELD, Science Bros, Tony Has Issues, Tony-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Weekly Updates, Whump, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, interactive content, like when you make everything ten times worse?, ultron but not as we know him, what's the opposite of a civil war fix it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 43
Words: 89,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21673864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaed/pseuds/Chaed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacelaska/pseuds/spacelaska
Summary: After Ultron, Tony has become a public hate figure, with a mounting legal bill and a company on the verge of collapse.Meanwhile, Steve is desperately trying to track down the Winter Soldier and he’ll do anything to see his old friend again, including throwing Tony under the bus.With Rhodey and Natasha gone, Bruce under house arrest, Clint out for blood and the looming threat of Hydra on the horizon, can the remnants of the Avengers come together and make their last stand?Or will Tony and Steve tear each other apart first?
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov (implied), Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Howard Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1079001
Comments: 546
Kudos: 138





	1. Chapter 1

The sand was wet against his bare feet and the onshore wind blew warm off the sea. Above him the sun played hide-and-seek with a cluster of cumulus clouds. Seagulls cooed in the distance. 

Tony had always been a warm weather type of guy. When the opportunity arose to move to Cali, he’d grabbed it like a drowning man grabbing a life ring. He’d been desperate to escape the oppressive smog and surprise blizzards of the East Coast. After he’d sent Edwin Jarvis into retirement, he’d left 890 5th Ave to catch dust on its leather chattels and marble floors and, most importantly, on his childhood ghosts.

While he’d relished in this new lifestyle (and all the perks associated with owning an exclusive bachelor’s home) from day one, the true appreciation had only come years later. The first big shift happened after Club Cave; for the first time since the cliffside mansion had been erected Tony saw the real value of living in a glasshouse. You could see your enemies approaching. You could prepare. Whatever surprise advantage they thought they had, you beat them to it. Nobody could catch you off-guard again. _Ever_. With the help of JARVIS, he built himself a fortress... patrolled by guards made of gold-titanium alloy.

But not even that was the real eye-opener. Had someone asked him before his odyssey into space what he thought Hell looked like, he would have gone for licking flames, screaming sinners and the guy with horns, hooves and a pointy trident aimed for one’s ass. 

After, he knew better. 

He brought the beer up, taking a swig. Condensation pearled off the neck of the bottle and onto his lips. A cool feeling settled in his belly. He put it back into the cooler.

“I could get used to this,” he declared.

“Bet you could, bud. Who wouldn’t, if given the chance?”

He turned his head, squinting even under the shades. He raised one hand up to shield against the blinding sun. It was a little hard to make out the details — even two years on he found he had difficulties adjusting to extreme brightness — but he saw what mattered: an identical lounger planted firmly in the sand next to his, a chilled lager that was on its way to empty, and a contented expression on his best friend’s face.

“I’m glad you could make it,” Tony said, and he really was. Things had been rough lately, not quite so good-morning-sunshine as the nice beach setting with its breeze and seagulls and sand-swept starfish let on. It felt nice to tune out The Big Things for once, to dig his feet into that wet sand and enjoy a cool blonde with his friend.

“A guy’s gotta take time off now and then,” Rhodey said. “And if I were you, I’d take note of that. You look a little under the weather.”

Tony shrugged. “Don’t know where you got that notion from.”

“Maybe because it’s written across your forehead like a highway billboard. Call 1-800-IMSCREWED. How’s that for a guess?”

“Not bad,” Tony said, taking another sip. This time the taste was sour in his mouth, almost like bile. He looked down at the label, surprised to see it didn’t read Heineken anymore. It wasn’t beer either. He made a genuine effort to be alarmed at the discovery, but found it impossible to work himself into a state that went beyond mild surprise… and a strange sense of accord. He now held onto a dusty decanter labeled _‘32 Glenfiddich,_ and he knew without checking that the backside contained a personalized message written in decades old ink. It felt comforting to hold it, that treacherous exhilaration someone might feel after jumping off the wagon and swapping in their bronze chip for another round in the glass prison. 

“I’m in trouble,” he admitted. “It’s bad.”

“Pepper?”

“No. I wish it was just her. I could bail myself out of that. God knows I’ve bailed myself out of trouble with her before. She’s not it. Not the worst, anyway.”

Rhodey nodded. For a moment — it had to be a trick of the lights — Tony thought he saw flecks of dirt staining those white teeth, a smudge of red behind the hairline. Over the wind he heard a series of creaks and cracks, like metal bending under overwhelming pressure. Like War Machine, as the gorget had bent in on itself. In the end, it would always come down to that. 

To how the rivets failed.

He blinked. The blood and dirt were gone and so was his father’s old bottle of whiskey. It was beer again, hadn’t ever been anything else. Huh. He was overcome by that same lethargy he’d felt before. But he couldn’t find it in himself to care about the beer’s transformation. The beer was the least of his problems.

_The real problem is you’ve dozed off in your rowboat. And come tomorrow, that boat’s going over the falls._

“Fury’s put the noose around my neck, Jim,” he said. “He’s just waiting to kick the box out from under my feet.”

Rhodey nodded amiably. Anyone with their brains not stuck up their asses knew that Nick Fury was a crook. The crook of crooks.

“You’re Tony Stark. I thought that counted for something.”

“Did. But then I went to space and came back an arm short and with my psych eval forged. What am I supposed to say? That I nodded off on the keyboard? That’s a sloppy defense for a guy who’s charged with marauding nuclear codes.”

“The gossip mill has it that the Russians already cleared out a cot in some backwoods gulag for you,” Rhodey joked, but it hit the wrong note. What did Rhodey know about the gossip mill?

“It was a mistake, though, right? You didn’t do it on purpose?” he continued. His eyes went wide at the last word, as though the prospect of deliberation invoked some terrible excitement in him. He waved his hand in a conspiratorial gesture, a you-can-confide-in-me invite. I ain’t bugged and I’m gonna back you no matter what. Just spill.

Mistake or not, it was irrelevant. There was no Complaint Department Tony could walk up to and explain how he’d been screwed over in the dirtiest of ways. And that sonofawhore Fury knew it as well as he did. There was no way Tony could call his bluff without digging himself deeper into the hole.

“Call incoming,” Rhodey suddenly said.

Tony looked up, confused. An irritating polyphonic ringtone invaded the beach’s serenity. He let go of the bottle and palmed his pockets for the source of the noise.

“Call incoming,” Rhodey said again, and now his voice was off too. It had taken on a mechanical intonation, the kind you were used to from early generation answering machines. The phone continued to ring. The sound seemed to originate from a distance, as though the wind carried it in. It sure didn’t come from his pockets. Tony had turned them inside out. They were empty.

“I can’t find it,” he said, growling. A splitting headache had taken him.

“Terminating session,” the Rhodey-not-Rhodey voice said, disinterested in Tony’s building migraine.

The hologram burst into a drift of blue-tinged pixels.

Gone were the sun-lounger and the ocean backdrop and the cool sand at his heels. His hands were not in the pockets of his swim trunks, but in a pair or ironed dress pants. He was sitting on a leather upholstered chair. The beach was nothing but a bunch of white linen sheets thrown haphazardly over hotel furniture.

He pulled off the glasses, pressed a palm against tightly shut eyes. A strong nausea settled in his gut. For a moment the urge to vomit was staggering. Transition still left a lot to be desired. Maybe the acronym was more fitting than he gave it credit for.

He took three slow inhales to compose. The phone kept ringing like an air raid siren. He groped blindly for it on the end table.

“What?”

“Mr Stark?”

The voice on the other hand was civilly calm. It belonged to one of his lawyers. Lou Durgan. He’d known it was bad when they’d skipped Stark Legal and gone straight for the shark tank, the guys who made it their daily business to spin the truth from crime to Christ.

“Yeah,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. The sims were getting frighteningly good. He could still smell the salt in the air, feel the grit of sand between his toes.

Outside, twilight had begun to steal across the day. How long had he been under? He remembered debating whether to pull down the drapes against the sun or not. It was easier to visualize in the dark, gave the mind a blank canvas to run riot on. But the brightness of the day had now turned into an early evening, and as he continued to listen half-heartedly to the voice on the other end of the line Tony estimated a session length of at least an hour and a half, if not longer. The more lifelike it got, the harder it was to leave.

“Mr Stark?” Lou Durgan asked again, and he realized a stretch of silence had preceded this cue.

“Say again? The reception blipped on me.”

“I asked if you had any more questions about tomorrow. I’ll send Andrew to pick you up in the morning and we’ll go through everything again before court.”

Tony’s attention shifted from the virtual beach back to reality, which was the presidential suite at the Ritz in Washington and had become the main journalistic attraction two days ago, after a temp had spilled that one of the high-rollers on the guest list was one Anthony E. Stark. The entrance had turned into a pap's combat field within the hour. Most of them were willing to sell their own grandmother to get a shot of the guy who was responsible for the first worldwide Internet blackout.

“Just make sure to drive out back,” he said. He didn’t need to step straight into the minefield.

“Of course. We'll liaise with your security detail.”

“Good,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Have you had the opportunity to look at the documents we couriered over?”

“Yes,” he lied, casting an eye to the unopened manila envelope that detailed all the many and varied ways that his life, liberty and livelihood were on the chopping block. Hacking, theft, cyber-terrorism, endangerment of life, wrongful death suits. They'd managed to get straight-up murder off the rap sheet, but manslaughter was almost certainly there.

“Anything you want to go over?”

“No.” He paused, then corrected himself. “No surprises.”

“Then please try to get some rest and we'll see you tomorrow at your pre-trial briefing.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He hung up. He put the phone back on the table, but not before glancing at the time. 08:34 PM. A little over two hours, then. The corner of his mouth twitched in a hint of a smile.

Jim Rhodes had always been the kind of friend you could lose track of time with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> We're super stoked to be back for the last installment in our "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" series. Be warned, this story will be full of all the things you would expect from us - horror, trauma, fucked-up relationships, intrigue, sex and death. Nobody is getting out unscathed.
> 
> If you're joining us again, thanks for sticking with us!
> 
> If you're a new reader, welcome! You can hopefully read this as a stand-alone story without too much confusion but if you want the full backstory, check out the first two works in the series, which start with Tony not making it back through the portal and just descend into full-on horror from there.
> 
> Thanks for joining us for the last part of the ride. Let's do this!


	2. Chapter 2

Steven Grant Rogers had sustained enough injuries in his life to kill fifty men. 

He'd lost count of the times that doctors marveled over the way his skin knit together with indefatigable determination, turning months of grueling recuperation into days at best. He bore the astonishment of the medical profession the same way he bore everything else these days: with gritted teeth and detached politeness.

When he was a boy, Steve had been the opposite of a walking advertisement for peak health. He’d been a sickly, pale lad growing up only to grow sicker. He remembered that one time his ma had needed to take him to the hospital. He’d sprinted all the way from school back home, a notable feat for a boy who ran out of breath while walking. He hadn’t run because some oddball urge had overcome him, though. He’d run because Chuck Sampson had had it in for him. Faced between wheezing like a dog and getting a kicking behind the Bunny Theater on 7th, Steve had preferred the former.

He’d spent the whole night hacking up a lung, one of those deep in-the-chest rasps, wracking and wet. When it didn’t clear two days later, his ma had taken him to see a nurse. She didn’t often take him for a check-up; she knew something was wrong with her boy, but she also knew there wasn’t much to be done about it unless he was at death’s door. 

His ma had been a decent woman and a loving mother, but like thousands of others she’d lost her work at the factory after the crash in ‘29. Steve had grown up to breadlines and Salvation Army food stations and that was all right, too. He’d never minded. Doctors were a different thing. Doctors cost money, of which his ma never had a lot. 

His ma reckoned Chuck was to blame. She’d wanted to go to his house, have a word with his father and Steve had begged her through racking coughs not to until she’d relented. It had taken him nearly eighty years (most of them spent under a layer of Arctic ice) to understand her reasoning: Sometimes, when you feel helpless, blaming someone else is the easiest way to forgive yourself.

He knew he’d never been meant to overhear his ma begging the landlord for a reprieve in rent pay because she’d used up all her savings to cover her little boy’s sick bills. He was certainly not meant to hear the landlord saying, “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement, Martha,” and the way his ma had cried that night after she thought he was sleeping.

At the place in his side where the drain had been, in the groove between his ribs, there’d been a scar. He’d run his fingers over it at night when he’d listen to her cry, feeling for the lump of tissue and promising himself that he was going to make it right one day, when he was grown up, a man, and could take care of her the way she had for him.

After Abraham Erskine, Steve’s scar had vanished in the same manner as all his other ailments. It took him a while to recalibrate. It was the strangest sensation to live in a body that was too big for you, to look in the mirror and see an intruder in the room. He’d navigated the world for so long in that thin, broken frame and suddenly he was taking up too much space, pulling doors off their hinges and moving too fast for his brain to make the connection.

Scars were a sort of testament, an echo of memory. To Captain America, they were denied. Sometimes, like when he thought back to fires and acid burns and being shot through the cheek that one time with a Chit blaster (the muscles of his face had hung off and you could see his teeth through the outside), that was when he counted himself lucky that the evidence disappeared overnight. Other times he longed for normalcy. He wished he could reach out in the dark to feel his own skin for proof of what he had done. Then he thought about the boys who didn’t make it home, or the ones like Sam Wilson, who’d ended up in worse shape still.

Lately he was nurturing his old habit almost every night, searching obsessively for the bullet hole in his shoulder that wasn’t there. 

The one that had been meant for Tony. 

Then he’d drift off to sleep, skin smooth and unblemished under his fingers and sometimes (just sometimes) he could pretend that it hadn’t happened. That pretence would last as long as next morning, when he’d fall into yet another routine: shower, shave, and dutifully present himself for a new round of cross-examination over the incident. Or, as Director Fury liked to call it, Captain A’s Big Fuck Up. He had a way of verbally conveying those capital letters.

While the faces on the other side of the table were interchangeable — Maria Hill, Brock Rumlow, Clint Barton, sometimes even Director Fury himself — the subject always remained the same.

“I don’t know what you’re keeping mum about, Cap,” Clint had said on maybe their fourth or fifth session. He’d just come back in after a break. He stank of tobacco. Steve tried to remember whether Clint had been a smoker before the Chitauri war. It seemed as distant a time as the 1940’s.

“I don’t remember,” he said. The question was related to Tony. Specifically whether he’d made any subversive comments on the ship when they’d found him. Tony was one big walking subversive comment, but there was no sense in damning him over that. “He’d just come out of some drug-induced coma. It took us the better part of a day to convince him we were real. He was half-dead.” He pointed to the recorder dutifully blinking on the table between them. “For the record, I don’t think he’s—”

Clint held up a hand. “That’s right. You don’t think. Not your decision whether Stark’s a wolf or a sheep.”

“If you could just tell me what it is he’s—”

“You know I can’t. This skeleton’s in a classified closet, Cap, at least until we shed enough light on the issue. So back to the story. According to Banner’s notes…”

They’d been over that ground countless times before. Trawling through the past, looking for evidence that Tony was unstable; compromised, a Chit sleeper agent, gone mad from the trauma — they clearly hadn’t finalized their narrative yet, but it was obvious what general direction they were going for.

If Nick Fury was to be believed, Tony Stark was going to prison for a very, very long time.

And he wanted Steve to help put him there.

* * *

“Think it over before you say yea or nay. They ain’t gonna ask forever. And you really don’t wanna go down _that_ road,” Clint Barton said with an intonation which made _that_ road sound like Steve’s last wrong choice if he decided to continue being bullheaded.

He continued to be bullheaded. Or at the very least totally perplexed at what was being asked of him.

“I caught a bullet for him. Now you want me to sell him out? In court?”

“He caused one hell of a mess. A lot of people are dead, you know. The rest, they’re out for blood. You can go on sitting there like a mule or you can help make it quick. But you can’t change it.”

“It’s wrong,” Steve said. He gave Clint an imploring look. “This is a witch hunt.”

“Damn straight,” Clint said, but the way he said it implied he didn’t share Steve’s deeper reasoning.

“Then why?”

“Because he’s the reason Nat didn’t come back from that bedlam of a mission.”

Steve sighed. Natasha Romanoff was a sore spot for a lot of people. It was no secret that she and Clint had been an item. Most of the agency knew it, although few approved it. There was a ‘no dating co-workers’ rule after all. The only one left out of the loop had been Bruce Banner, who’d developed his own set of doomed romantic notions where Natasha was concerned. And to her discredit, she hadn’t done the right thing and set him straight. Steve still didn’t know what to think about that. But he didn’t know what to think about a lot of things were Natasha Romanoff was concerned.

“What happened to her… if I could have—”

“Yeah, but you didn’t,” Clint said. “So save your breath.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, anyway. 

“That won’t bring her back either.”

* * *

SHIELD canteens weren’t like the military canteens that he had grown used to at Camp Lehigh. There was an espresso machine and they served croissants with lattes and had chairs with plush upholstery. He supposed that was the point, keeping the Spooks happy. Working for a covert government agency was stressful enough without being fed army slop on tin-backed chairs.

He was picking at a Danish pastry when Maria Hill sidled up beside him, wearing jeans and a nice t-shirt. A shopping bag dangled from one arm. If she was preparing for some undercover mission, she was doing a great job at it. Or maybe it was her day off and she’d just run some errands. He wondered if she lived like Clint in the staff housing on site. He knew next to nothing about her.

She dumped the bag on the bench beside him. The logo of the bag belonged to some overpriced vintage bookshop. Steve had never gotten his head around the twenty-first century fad of paying extra money to buy old, beat up things.

“Didn’t take you for much of a reader,” he said. Realising how it sounded, he backtracked. “I mean, you don’t seem like you have a lot of down-time.”

“I don’t,” Hill said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. It rarely did.

He licked the tip of his finger and dipped it into the pastry flakes, watching the brown, papery fragments stick to his skin. He put his finger in his mouth. He decided she was probably a plant, hoping he’d let his guard down and reveal some damning evidence on Tony. 

“Anything good?” he asked, nodding to the bag.

“A story about a man who gets locked away for writing things he shouldn’t,” she said. “And about what happens when the Devil comes to town.”

“Sounds depressing,” Steve said. He’d never been much of a reader himself. Not outside of pilfered copies of Boys’ Own from Bucky’s neighbour’s brother.

“It’s a comedy. It has a happy ending. Of sorts.”

He cocked his head, confused. “So you’ve already read it?”

“It’s not for me.” 

She made a show of glancing at her phone and checking the time, then got up. “Well, always a pleasure, Captain Rogers.”

“Agent Hill.”

She brushed her fingertips against his shoulder once, and muttered so quietly that he was barely sure of what he’d heard. 

“Take care, Steve.”

* * *

Chuck Sampson had long since died of one ailment or another. The altruist in Steve wished him a passing of old age in the presence of his loved ones. The sickly asthma plagued boy who’d lived in terror of Chuck’s shenanigans, however, was less magnanimous.

When he’d first gotten the Internet, he’d spent weeks and weeks at a time just looking up everything he could about anyone whose name he could remember. Howard first, Bucky second, then every name that popped into his head. Including Chuck’s.

While he’d survived World War II, it was Nixon’s call to arms during the Vietnam war that had driven the final nail into Chuck Sampson’s coffin. He’d returned from the Viet Kong a hero; unfortunately two legs down and with a deep craving for heroin. He’d died of an overdose six months later (in a rundown motel room, which incidentally featured a cheap reprint of Steve’s old posters, a special edition dedicated to Captain America’s 30 year anniversary. The notion of _STAND PROUD FOR AMERICA_ had failed to enthrall Chuck the way it had the first two times around. Captain A’s stoic visage was taken down and replaced with some modern art phony when the room was overhauled).

Now, a lifetime later, Steve couldn’t help but think of Chuck Sampson as he lay awake in his bunk, finding unpleasant correlations between the bullies of his past and those that were plaguing him in the present. The only difference was that Nick Fury wasn’t out for the contents of Steve’s lunchbox — he was out for something bigger. Steve didn’t know what it was, only that it was nothing good. All the super serum in the world and he was still the same cowed kid deep down.

He knew something wasn’t right. Not with SHIELD and not with any of this. Bruce had told him as much before he’d entered the ship and, after he’d prevented Tony’s attempted assassination (because that was surely what it had been), Steve had passed on these words of caution to Tony before all three of them had been escorted into different directions.

He knew where Tony was — with his head under the guillotine, squirming to get out from underneath it — but he had seen neither hide nor hair of Bruce. Had they gotten on to him? Were the repeated interrogations just a way to tie up his time until they had what they really wanted? Were Steve, and maybe even Tony, a smokescreen while SHIELD worked to get to the root of the problem and exterminate it before it seized upper hand?

Bruce had found something, something bad enough to put him onto a plane bound straight for the lion’s lair. He must have been desperate, because Bruce didn’t strike him as a man to throw himself headfirst into a known danger. He must have had a damn good reason.

But what had he found? He wouldn’t have taken such a big risk just to update Steve on his lost childhood friend. It had to be something bigger.

Because bullies like Fury never bothered with anything less.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> RIP Chuck S
> 
> Big love to everyone who came back for Part 3 - we're so stoked to see so many old faces. Or usernames, rather. Anyway, we love you guys and thank you. <3


	3. Chapter 3

If he’d really wanted to, he could have gotten out. It wasn’t as much confinement as it was a test of patience. Simplicity, patience and compassion. Wasn’t that what Lao Tzu preached? And if it worked for ancient Chinese philosophers, why shouldn’t it for Bruce Banner?

He’d picked up classic Russian literature as a pastime, having finished Checkhov’s _The Shooting Party_ just a week ago, already hungrily devouring _Crime and Punishment_. Apart from following in the tracks of dead Russian novelists and sipping on chamomile tea, there wasn’t a lot else to do. At least it was better to think that way because one thing he could not allow to join the ranks of his daily grinds.

Under no circumstances must he lose his temper.

Losing his temper, Maria Hill had told him as she’d personally inspected the ankle monitor they’d outfitted him with, would mean that SHIELD was obligated to pass his file to the US military. That would be a lifetime sentence, and the accommodation would be by far inferior to his current residence. He’d miss out on all the luxuries like herbal tea, his weekly newspaper and literature fresh off the press whenever he wanted it.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear,” Maria had said with a twinkle to her eyes that had let on just how careful he would have to be if he didn’t want to end up in Thaddeus Ross’ care. 

The truth was, he’d covered his tracks badly. He should have stayed in Russia. He’d been getting proficient at the language, had learned the name of the cleaning lady and had warmed up to the idea of hibernating in cold Moscow winter. Why he had to get tangled up in Tony Stark’s newest drama was anyone’s guess.

He could pretend he cared, make it as simple as that. But the truth was a little bit more complicated. Ever since Natasha had sought him out that night in Kolkata with a non-voluntary offer of collaboration, few things in Bruce’s life had been simple.

“Help us save the world and you get to walk away,” had been the bargain. Of course, nobody had walked away with a happy bounce in their step when it had all been over. They’d locked out Iron Man on the other side of a wormhole in hopes of a quick fix which had ultimately resulted in an alien war that lasted for over a year and claimed victims by the tens of thousands. The rebuilding efforts stretched out to this day, nearly six years after the fact.

Tony had returned eventually, a glimmer of hope in a fool’s paradise, but his homecoming was overshadowed by the price it had cost: among others, the life of someone very dear to Bruce.

It had been this grief fueled state for Natasha that had sparked an unhealthy ardor of discovery within Bruce. In her will, she’d left him a puzzle. But the thing with puzzles is, most of them come down to one missing piece of information. That’s why the final piece is so satisfying to place. Unless, of course, the piece doesn’t quite fit.

That can make you wish you’d never opened the box in the first place.

* * *

When Tolstoy and Pushkin needed a break, Bruce watched TV. The unit, an old-school tube television set, was an olive branch for three months straight of exemplary conduct. It had also conveniently come once the cat had been let out of the bag.

In the early days he’d been sequestered from any information. Once Tony had been off that ship, marched off in manacles and a charge of terrorism, Fury had been expedite at tying up loose ends. Bruce didn’t know what had become of Steve, but he suspected similar consequences to his own. Maybe it wasn’t as luxurious as a two-room apartment with a South facing kitchen window and tube television, but it didn’t look like Fury had put him front and center in terms of culpability. That honor fell solely to Tony.

He cobbled up the remote, switched on the TV and zapped through the five channels available until he settled on CNN. Apart from that it was his personal favorite (the presenter on BBC World News sounded like he was chronically congested) it didn’t really matter what program he watched. They were all unanimous in what they broadcasted: The Crisis, its causes, repercussions, and consequences. And of course, Tony Stark’s public trial.

Tony had been made the scapegoat on a series of unfortunate events that culminated in a disastrous chain reaction. The executive summary was following: a corrupted version of JARVIS had leaked online — ‘gone rogue’ was the journalistic term oft-quoted — and in the space of a week had taken control of military satellites, crashed the stock market, and infested every computer which had been connected to the Internet at that time. On a global scale, this had nearly ended in World War III, with North Korea hovering over the big red button like a game show contestant waiting to buzz in for the correct answer.

For the safety of humankind, the political heads of the world resolved to temporarily shut down the Internet in its entirety. Before the novelty of analogous TV returned to his life, news came through a daily newspaper which SHIELD was accommodating enough to pass him on a week after publishing date. Headlines such as _Sokovian Economy Plunges In Wake Of Stark Virus_ and _Russia Accuses The US Of Deliberate Provocation_ were daily fare. Many took personal stabs at Tony. Those that didn’t, reported factually on the road to ruin in store for his company.

Tony looked haggard in the dock, perfectly groomed and affecting a calm sincerity that had obviously been coached into him by a good defense team. Having been his doctor for so long, it was impossible not to notice the telltale signs showing what a delicate tightrope he was walking in terms of balancing his meds.

The formalities followed. Hand on the bible, Tony swore he’d say the truth and nothing but the truth. What made the picture worse was that they hadn't let him keep the arm. It made sense — giving advanced tech to someone they were painting with cyberterrorism charges didn't go over well with the audience — but it made him look broken in a way that made Bruce think it was a court order rather than a PR thing on Tony’s part. The prosthetic arm had ceased to be a badge of honor. He was just a guy who’d gone to space and came back to drag the whole world down with him.

Bruce had never been called to testify. He’d had a one-on-one talk with Pepper three weeks ago, with her showing up out of the blue in the company of two SHIELD drones. She’d looked awful. She’d lost several pounds from her already slim frame and the skin under her eyes had been paper-thin, translucent almost. She’d always seemed insulated from looking her age by a mystical combination of creams and pilates and pre-prepared meal boxes hand-delivered into her office. Even in bereavement, she'd always looked perfect. But during that meeting and every time after he’d seen her face in a news report, she’d looked weary, crumpled and every single day of her forty-something years.

He’d thought at first she’d come to bail him out of his lock-up. She'd gotten him out of a mess like this before, back during the Chitauri War. He was delighted and relieved in equal measure. If anyone could fix this, it was Pepper. But the visit was no social call.

“I can’t talk about anything, Bruce, not even ask you how you’re doing,” she told him while they were still in company of her entourage. “I’m here because I need _you_ to talk.”

She wanted to know what everyone else couldn’t get enough of either: A retelling of what had happened on that blasted spaceship, no detail too small.

She pressed him insistently with an old fashioned cassette tape recorder. It looked strangely anachronistic, like she was playing the part of a plucky junior reporter in an ‘80s detective movie. He did as she asked, spent hours hashing over details, answering and reanswering questions. He'd always been a good memory. He was also ecstatic to interact with someone who wasn’t the delivery boy picking up his weekly care list or Maria Hill who had nothing but bad news whenever she sought out his company.

“Thank you, Bruce,” Pepper told him as she picked up her linen jacket from the back of the chair.

He stood, as much out of courtesy as out of desperation. “Did they say anything about when I might get out?”

She put the recorder away in her cavernous handbag. Then she looked at him with a mix of exhaustion and confusion, as though his question had just triggered a new wave of problems to fix. He could have pinpointed the moment when she resigned herself to accepting that he was most likely not holed up in a two-room apartment of his own free will, and neither was the ankle monitor a mismatched accessory choice on his part.

The next emotion crossing her features was shallow sympathy. It wasn’t deliberate. Shallow sympathy just seemed the only emotion currently available to her if the catalyst wasn’t Tony.

“Look, I’m trying to be cooperative here. Play ball, not make trouble,” he said, although he knew his opening was gone. In a last hope he tried, “For Tony’s sake.”

Pepper folded her arms in front of her, the way people do when they’re cold. To Bruce it made the impression of trying to protect against an oncoming car bound to run her over.

“I’m sorry, Bruce. I’ll try to put in a good word for you.”

A week later the doorbell rang. He hurried to it like a dog awaiting his master’s return. A package awaited, white padded envelope, no sender. He played with the idea that maybe Pepper had sent it in return for his confession on tape. He ripped open the envelope and reached inside.

But it was only a copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s _The Master And Margarita._

In a separate note Maria Hill wished him a pleasant reading experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now we say hello and welcome back to Bruce. [Don't forget to take a look around.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/Lunatics/3/3.html)
> 
> We hope you all have a wonderful festive season and Merry Christmas! See you next week for a New Years update. <3
> 
> (Dear Santa, all we want for Christmas is reviews...)


	4. Chapter 4

“Thank you, Stacey,” Pepper said, taking the stack of folders from her assistant and stuffing them into her purse. “Have a good day.”

Stacey nodded wearily, as though shutting up shop sounded like the equivalent of hallelujah to her. She had dark circles under her eyes. Half the staff had dark circles under their eyes. They’d barely avoided the abyss of that bottomless place called BANKRUPTCY.

Although Stark Industries was not directly involved in the multitude of charges filed against Tony, his public lapidation was like a lead weight pulling the company relentlessly down. The masses weren’t in the mood for a redemption story. They didn’t want to settle down; they wanted to punch up. Economies had crashed and Tony was still ensconced in relative luxury. It was their collective personal Hell realized.

Tony had long since passed the point of being allowed to say no, not with the entire firm circling the drain. Pepper was trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea herself; if she wanted to avoid resistance within the ranks and risk a possible mutiny, she had to stop putting Tony’s personal needs in front of the company’s. They’d talked about it. He’d said he understood, but more and more she was getting the impression that there wasn’t much light behind his eyes. He was treading water, complying with everything that was put in front of him. He couldn’t afford not to.

Ride it out, said the PR team. A public apology, a good one, is worth its weight in gold. The tides of public opinion were fickle. If he could make puppy eyes for the camera and SI could plough enough of its revenue into charity, then they could see an upswing to neutral polling by next Christmas. It all sounded suspiciously optimistic, she thought, her security team ushering her past the ever-dwindling crowd of people outside the building holding up crude placards.

TONY STARK HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS read the latest sign. She fixed her gaze ahead, their shouts just another thing that had become a normal part of her working day.

Tony was bound to go on the air soon. While she’d followed the first few of his court hearings from the public gallery, work had called her away this time around. She didn’t want to slight him, even less let him down in a situation as precarious as this. But they were talking about a multi-billion enterprise and they couldn’t risk endangering it more than it already was. Resources were stretched thin, business partners were dropping negotiations, clients stopped buying.

“Let me bail the water,” Tony had said when they'd talked about it. “You fix up the hole in the boat. 'Sides, PR says I could do with a little less public handholding.”

She suspected that was less PR’s opinion and more Tony’s bottomed-out self pride, but she’d just nodded at his pretense reason. He had the best lawyers money could buy. This was their game, not hers.

Her battle was fought in a different trench.

On today's agenda was a highly important merger. Fujikawa Industries, a small tech firm based out of Japan with which SI had allied over several past projects, was willing to talk about a takeover. Or had been, at least. Before.

She turned her phone to Silent for the lunch date. As much as she wanted to follow Tony's hearing on a minute-by-minute basis, she needed to keep her head in the game. And she couldn't do that while worrying herself sick over an event she had no power controlling. She debated calling him just before, wishing him good luck — telling him to behave himself — but she took one look at at the display showing his caller ID and it was as though a jolt went through her at the mere thought of dialing. She thought back to a time when calling Tony had felt as natural as breathing, before this growing chasm had opened up between them. She thought about the things that she wasn’t telling him, about what she was keeping him shielded from, and how many secrets he was keeping from her in return.

No, she decided. He’d be fine. He _needed_ to be fine. No man had beaten the odds so spectacularly and repetitively as Tony. It wasn’t just the big things like Afghanistan and the wormhole — although they were certainly the most striking — but countless instances where he’d thrown himself into known or unknown danger and somehow came up on top. Jim Rhodes had once said that Tony was like a cat with nine lives. Or alternatively, a cockroach. “Impossible to get rid of,” Jim had explained and they’d both barked laughter.

The thought of Jim made her pensive. She went into the work lunch glum, trying to focus on technicalities of the deal rather than pursuing that tempting thought of Jim being alive and around to help her guide Tony away from putting himself straight into a jail cell.

But Jim was dead, and that memory hurt deeper than Kenjiro Fushikawa's annulation over a plate of nigiri roll. Coalescing with Stark Industries just wasn't feasible at the moment. Everything Tony Stark touched had stopped turning into gold; it now turned into ruin.

She bid Kenjiro Fushikawa goodbye with a handshake and a sympathizing smile. Maybe in the future. Maybe in the future, he agreed, but she had no misgivings that the possibility was born strictly out of courteousness and nothing more.

She only checked her phone once she was back in the car – and it was good she had waited. She couldn't have masked her expression even if she'd wanted to. There were eleven calls in absence from various high-ups and busybodies. At least a dozen messages had been left by her PA. There was no correspondence from Tony.

By the time she’d slogged through LA traffic and onto the PCH she’d glanced through all of Stacey’s messages and had a half-formed plan of action about whom to call and whom to block for the reminder of the day.

What she did first was dial Happy Hogan’s number. He picked up on the second ring.

“Where are you? Are you with him?”

“Uh-uh. Yeah,” Happy said, his voice distracted. There was noise on the line and she heard him call to someone in the distance. “Hey, you! Unless you’re staff, don’t even think of steppin’ outta that elevator, you hear me?”

She waited. More noise, then Happy was back again. “Sorry, Ms Potts.”

“Where are you?”

“Just got back to the suite. Us and about a dozen ink slingers. Mr Stark’s okay. Got him through with no more trouble.”

“That’s good,” she said, more to herself than to Happy. “Did he… is he…?” She didn’t know how to ask.

“Salty as all hell.” He added quickly, “But not in front of the papz or that turncoat. He was right in callin’ it though, if ya ask me. Wasn’t a scrap of decency in that guy.”

“Yes, thank you, Happy.” She wasn’t about to get into discussing the finer aspects of interviewing with Tony’s driver. “If there’s anything, please call me.”

“You know it, Ms Potts.”

* * *

It took her almost an hour after that to get through to Tony. She’d put out some fires first, yes, but that had taken all of fifteen minutes. The rest of the hour she’d looked at the phone and the phone had glared back at her in its efficient blue light, illuminating Tony’s contact.

The truth was, she’d been hoping he’d call her first.

Phone pressed to her ear now she waited. Tony wasn’t nearly as instantaneous in answering his calls as Happy had been. She was rerouted to his mailbox and urged to leave a message after the beep tone.

Her mouth was half open when she decided that no, and ground it tightly shut again. She put down the phone, regarded it with a mix of ache and resentment and—

It lit up, ringing. Tony.

“Hey. Sorry. I didn’t get it in time.”

She heard the careful way he was speaking, going from one word to the next like a man using stepping stones to cross a small stream.

“Are you alright?” she asked. He’d had a tough week, long hours on the self-flagellation circuit. She could understand why he'd walked, even if she didn't like it.

“Sure.”

She pressed her lips together at his uncharacteristic lack of loquaciousness. “How bad are we talking, Tony? Medication bad?”

She wondered, not for the first time, if he was addicted to the stuff yet. Prescription drugs had a veneer of respectability, afforded by the hallowed signature of a doctor. They'd agreed to keep the blues as a last resort, fueled by PR paranoia that even so much as a slurred word in public would sink them in terms of credibility. The thought occurred to her now. “You're staying in your room, right?”

“I don’t plan on coming out again until they need another whipping boy on camera.”

“Tony,” she tried, but wasn’t exactly sure what she was trying for. She wanted to tell him that they could cancel it, that he could lay low for a week or two while she smoothed things out. She also wanted to reach through the screen of her smartphone, grab him by his shoulders and shake him awake like a warden does a convict.

“You watched it yet?”

She thought of the footage, recorded in crisp HD for posterity.

“Yes,” she said carefully. She wanted to feel out his mood more than she wanted to give her own opinion.

“I didn’t think I heard right when they called him up. My heart was in my throat there for a moment.”

“Lou didn’t know?”

Lou Durgan was Tony’s head attorney. He was a tough-love, old warhorse in the legal world and had seen his fair share of dicey lawsuits of which he’d rarely lost one. When they’d hired him onto Tony’s case he’d been frank about the circumstances. “You’re a very rich man with a very shaky case, Mr Stark. The combination could be like working with old dynamite.”

But in the end he’d taken the job anyway.

Tony’s voice grounded her back to the present. He sounded angry, the kind of angry that has to burn itself out because it has no release valve. Tony wasn’t prone to such bouts of unchecked temper, but if there was one thing able to set him off like this, it was what had transpired in the courtroom.

“No. Nobody knew. Full testimony, can you believe that? From the moment he opened his mouth he lied like a rug. If Lou hadn’t called in the break I think I would have blown up.”

“He told you to go?”

“No. No, I— I just couldn’t have walked back in there, Pep. I would have picked a fight, and not a verbal one.”

“That would have been bad,” she conceded.

“Yeah. I suppose,” Tony said and he seemed to be a little calmer. If he’d paced the room so far, she thought he might have sat down now.

“Did Lou say… how does this change things?”

“I don’t know. It’ll have some weight, surely. I guess we’ll find out soon enough. God.”

She wanted to tell him that things would turn out alright, but she bit back the encouragement. He’d heard enough lies for the day. Instead she asked again,

“Tony, are you alright?”

This time his answer came slower, after a period of thinking. This time, it was genuine.

“No. I just got sold down the river by Captain America. I think I’m a far cry from alright, Pepper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra, extra! Read all about it!
> 
> Happy New Year to all of our wonderful readers! <3


	5. Chapter 5

“How about you open the throttle some, Cap? What’s with all this ass dragging? You getting old or what?”

Steve ground his teeth and stepped it up. Age wasn’t his problem; being detained for a perceived eternity was. He hadn’t had the chance to stretch out his legs in forever and he wasn’t going to shortstop his one allowance at PT just because Brock Rumlow wanted to show off in a sprint race against Captain America. If Steve cranked it up, like really cranked it up, he’d leave Rumlow in the dust with a mouthful of Mojave sand in his face. Slow and restrained. That was the name of the game these days, at least until he found his feet back on terra firma.

Fury didn’t trust him to go solo. While he’d won back some of his privileges, most of them were bracketed ACCOMPANIED ONLY. Running was one item on that list. There were only a handful of people authorized to babysit Steve and, unfortunately, Rumlow was a favorite. He hadn’t yet worked out what to make of the man. On the surface, he looked like a good CO. Looked after his men. Inspired loyalty. Rough around the edges, sure, and no love lost for Tony Stark. But none of that had set the alarm bells ringing. Steve had never seen himself going out for a beer with the guy, but he’d not made his skin crawl either. Until now.

They were jogging outside the perimeter fence. Steve was sweating a good deal, less from the exertion and more from the heat. It was midday, the sun beating relentlessly down.

“One more?” he asked.

“Lemme guess,” Rumlow drawled, “You could do this all day?”

“Longer than you anyway,” Steve sniped.

“Well, try me. Just don’t lap the Enterprise. Dismantling work started yesterday. They cordoned off all incoming save construction traffic.”

Steve craned his neck to where the behemoth poised in the distance, wrapped in tarpaulin and surrounded by tower cranes which perched guard-like in a circle around it. For all the trouble Fury had gone to acquire legal ownership over the ship, it seemed strange that he was now in a hurry to take it down and store it in boxes in the SHIELD attic.

“What are they going to do with it?” he asked. He felt oddly robbed to see it being stripped away, as though by disassembling it Fury was doing him a private spite. He could only imagine what Tony would think about it once he heard. Maybe it was part of SHIELD’s courtroom tactic. Despite painting the bullseye on Tony’s back they were still struggling to deliver the death blow. Perhaps Fury thought that taunting him with the ship would unsettle Tony on a deeper level than his attorneys were able to deflect.

“I wouldn’t know,” Rumlow said. “Rumor says it’ll be reprocessed.”

“Into what?”

“A designer mall, a cinema, indoor football stadium. Only God ‘n Fury know, Cap, and I ain’t sure about the former.” 

* * *

“There’s going to be some changes in how things will work from here on out, Captain.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. Would there? He’d been hearing the same empty threat for weeks on end now, yet nothing had so far revolutionized about his regular debriefing sessions. He’d answer all their questions which would be immortalized on paper. Evidence, no doubt. But if they’d ask him to repeat what he’d just said in a public courtroom he’d decline. It was one thing to give a factual report in a high security environment. It was another to recollect a memory in a room full of cameras and lawyers trying to trip him up over an unfortunate phrasing, and yet still another to do it while looking Tony straight in the eye.

“If the question’s the same,” he said tiredly, “then my answer hasn’t changed.”

Nick Fury willed the kind of smile onto his face a gambler exhibits when scooping up his winnings, the hint of amusement that might appear when some lesser opponent has been utterly destroyed. It was an expression Steve knew all too well; Howard Stark had been prone to exhibit it, and to a lesser scale his son. Plastered across Fury’s face, however, it looked demonic.

“I believe I’ve found a way for us to resolve our differences. A middle-of-the-road solution, if you will,” Fury was saying. “I understand you’re not comfortable going out there to take the stand, at least not without suitable incentive. Well, I think I’ve found one.”

“With all due respect, sir, when I say no I mean—”

But the rest of his admonition remained stuck in his throat like cut glass. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d feared (no, that was wrong, he’d actually secretly hoped) that at one point Fury would pull this particular card from the deck. What he hadn’t expected was the moral dilemma he felt now that he had. He looked at the stenciled letters on the front page of the manila folder with hunger.

Oh, what an incentive this was.

PROJECT: WINTER SOLDIER read the headline in crisp typewriter fashion. In smaller print underneath was CASE HISTORY. The folder was three fingers thick.

“This isn’t the one you showed me before,” he said, referring to the dossier Fury had baited him with once. That one had been but a handful of pages, all dead ends. _But it was enough to get you to go to space, wasn’t it? All on the strength of some cobbled-together conspiracy theories. What will you do for THIS?_

“New information has come to light,” Fury said, making no effort to embellish the lie. He didn’t look remotely apologetic. “And before you ask, this isn’t all of it. Let’s call it a taster. Have a look.”

Warily, Steve pulled the folder over the table. The cardboard was old, heavy; passed through a lot of hands. He flipped it open. He stared down at the photograph. Although the picture spoke for itself, he still asked, “It’s really him?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Alive?”

“Last positive sighting was six months ago. Romania.” Fury jabbed with one gloved hand at a grainy surveillance photo. The ghost of Bucky Barnes, face framed with wild, overgrown hair, stared out at Steve. He was looking straight at the camera, impassive and hunted all at once. Steve thought of Bruce scanning all that indecipherable Cyrillic, the doc’s expression piecing together a picture of torture more clearly than his halting translation ever could. 

Fury cleared his throat, jolted him out of his memories. “I can give you an address if you like. Why don’t you write him a letter? See what happens.”

Steve looked up. This was where he had to watch himself. “You’re not giving me this out of the goodness of your heart, are you, sir?”

“I’m a generous man,” Fury conceded, “but I wouldn’t be in this position if I gave away all my good leads for free.”

“Of course,” Steve said. “You want me to testify.” 

Fury’s one beady eye lit up. “A simple testimonial. Tomorrow, 11 AM at the Moultrie Courthouse in DC. Hill will have your transport arranged tonight if you agree.” He held up a hand, perhaps sensing that Steve was about to protest. “ _Should_ you agree, you’ll have full access to the Winter Soldier files. In fact, I’d like to appoint you principal investigator. The case has come to a standstill. The listed CISO is… no longer available.”

Steve leafed back to the first-page abstract. The best he tried, he could not hide a laugh from escaping him.

The name in charge belonged to one NATASHA ROMANOFF.

* * *

The man in the mirror stared at him with low eyes. His uniform was crease-free, still warm from the iron. His face was clean-shaven, his hair cropped close and his boots polished to a high sheen. He was the personification of credible. An old, familiar jingle popped into his mind.

_Who's_ _strong and brave, here to save the American Way?_   
_Who vows to fight like a man for what's right night and day?_  
_Who's here to prove that we can?_ _  
__The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan!_

The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan. For a long time, Steve had been in a quandary about Captain America. What was he other than the flesh-and-blood version of Uncle Sam, performing throughout the country and fooling young boys into believing their hero’s fate was just a pen stroke away? Only after he’d switched the stage for the frontlines Steve had begun to believe in the role he was meant to play.

It had been the day they’d rescued the 107th from the Wehrmacht’s stronghold in Azzano, the day he’d freed his best friend out of what they’d later learn had been an outpost of Hitler’s HYDRA initiative. 

On that day Steve had believed in everything the guise of Captain America was purported to be. That he was going to be a real, honest to goodness hero. That he was going to make a difference. That he would turn the tide of the war, single-handedly. Maybe that had been why he’d been so desperate to sacrifice himself eight months later when he’d downed that plane into the ice. He could have thrown the damn tesseract out of the window and hit the emergency eject button. But no. Noble suicide was simpler; if he had truly become the character of someone else’s invention, the narrative had to abide, be closed nice and neatly. He would go from man to myth rather than disabuse people of the notion that he was a real hero. 

Lucky then, that he’d received a second chance -- and could now disappoint a whole new generation.

Maria Hill waited patiently in the anteroom, a badge pinned to her suit and a stack of folders under her arm. She’d dropped her usual SHIELD uniform for the occasion, opting instead for formal wear. She was his chaperone today, sticking to his heels like a persistent piece of gum. Steve had half expected her to follow him into the men’s restroom. Although she hadn’t gone to that length, she guarded the door like a watchdog.

“Ready?” she asked. It was a purely rhetorical inquiry. She wouldn’t care either way as long as he did what they were here for him to do.

They began walking.

“And you remember what to say, yes? Stark’s team aren’t expecting you, but if they see an opening they’ll jump it. So stick to your lines and don’t give them one.” 

He wanted to tell her to call Tony by his first name. Whenever someone said ‘Stark’, a part of Steve looked around, expecting Howard to show up. And that sure as heck wasn’t going to happen today, unless Fury had more aces up his sleeve than Steve knew about.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said obligingly and tried to ignore the nausea settling in his stomach.

“I know it’s not your choice,” she said quietly. “But it’s the right move.”

She walked on briskly before he could formulate a response to that.

When they entered the courtroom he felt as though every head in the room was turning to judge him. An array of emotions played out across the gallery’s cumulative face, from sympathy and surprise to outright hostility and hatred. You could never make everyone happy, he supposed, wondering if Tony encountered the same reaction every time he walked down the ingress.

He steeled himself, fixing his gaze upfront on the judge’s bench and set one foot in front of the other.

He didn’t look Tony’s way as he passed the counsel table.

The shame was just too great.

* * *

Sometimes, you can’t lie down on the wire yourself. 

Sometimes, you have to push a guy. 

* * *

  
  
  
  


Bucky would have done it for him too.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey sportsfans - sorry for the slightly erratic update schedule over the tail end of the festive period. Normal service should be resumed soon. Until then, as always, thank you for your lovely lovely comments (did we mention we love comments? XD).
> 
> WHERE IN THE WORLD IS THE WINTER SOLDIER?


	6. Chapter 6

Steve’s testimonial had turned the tide, but not in Tony’s favor. Although Fury’s trump card didn’t have enough power to topple the juridical system — Tony still had a superior legal team and the money needed to buy their confidence in weaseling his charge down to time served — it had been enough to fool the gullible public.

Steve was in many ways the antithesis to Tony. While the Stark brand symbolized future and technology, Captain America represented stability and safety, painting happy families whose kids played in the backyard instead of being absorbed by whatever their mobile devices offered in terms of entertainment. People ate up the nostalgic war era spam-and-beans like it was deliverance from evil. The Captain America of bygone days who used to prance around a stage and KO a cartoonish version of Hitler now had Tony Stark as his 21st Century Judy to his punch. Because every hero needed a villain, right?

“So Fury either found a way to wash his hands of all of this,” Pepper said as they watched the news reel placating Tony as the world’s newest scapegoat. “Or he decided that taking you down is worth the collateral.”

Even as she was saying it, he knew she was right. SHIELD had never been helping him, not back with Obie and certainly not when he’d returned from space. They'd merely been future-proofing their relationship in case their red and gold attack dog got off its leash. A nice built-in shock collar to keep him at heel. Attaboy.

“I won’t go down easy,” Tony swore with a smile full of bared teeth.

By the look on Pepper’s face, it was exactly what she was worried about. After all, cornered dogs were the most unpredictable.

* * *

“I swear,” Steve vowed, dressed up pretty in his patriot’s uniform, palm flat against the Bible as he hauled skeletons out of Tony’s closet nobody was ever supposed to find, to fuck him over for the benefit of a public that was all too eager to witness his downfall.

But not today.

It would have been commendable if BARF had formed on the idea of a therapeutic device. Shame it had nothing to do with Tony steering in the direction of self-help and everything to do with Tony wanting to square up with his demons and trip those bastards up good.

The courtroom was a laudable recreation, from the reproving looks on the jury’s faces to the tock-tock-tock of the parqueted wood floor as the next witness climbed the stand.

This time around, he didn’t feel the onrush of panic as Lou Durgan pushed his notepad across the table, on it a single penciled word, underlined and encircled. And if the physical highlighting wasn’t enough to convey the warning, the look on Lou’s face said the rest.  _ Brace yourself, lad. Here comes the knife. _

No, this time Tony just nodded calmly. It was a similar composure one might experience when watching a scary movie the second time over. The monster forfeits its surprise element. You knew what was about to leap out of that closet.

He rethought, remodeled. He stuck a here-be-dragons warning on the fabled closet. Now it was him passing the note to Lou, him having the upper hand, him saying,  _ Bring it on, bud. Hope that knife’s got a nice edge to it. _

A smile broke through the headache-induced frown on his face. Outside, the world might be slipping through his fingers. In here, his fingers were around Steve Rogers’ throat… and starting to squeeze.

* * *

Technically, he won the trial, even if it meant sweet Fanny Adams. The only reason everyone heralded victory was because he didn’t have to do time, much to the disappointment of his adversaries. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. He lived in a world free of orange jumpsuits, but it was full instead of baleful looks and bleeping smartphone reminders of how the company his father had built was now a raging dumpster fire.

Nick Fury had got away, his darling poster boy had got away, even the nazi-alien race who’d tortured and abused Tony had got away after popping up from beyond the grave to deliver one final kick to the nuts.

The mea culpa was all on his card.

Part of Tony’s huge image problem — what the forensics guys had seized on at trial — was one of his space pet projects. He’d done a lot of coding up there, feverish ideas and visions. All the way up in the dead of space, with Earth so very far away and vulnerable, he’d concocted a fantasy of something with unimaginable reach, with unlimited capabilities, no restrictions to tie it down. An AI based on JARVIS’ potency, but less of a butler and more of a bouncer. A peacekeeper program.

He’d nicknamed it ULTRON, after the Roman god of war whose full name was Mars Ultor. Translated it meant Mars the Avenger. On his own and going mad with loneliness, he’d found the analogy too good to pass up. ULTRON was born, carefully nursed and tended until, in a moment of clarity, he’d looked at his creation and saw what he’d really fathered:

Not a suit of armor around the world, but George Orwell’s Big Brother come alive.

He’d ordered J to consign it to a partitioned part of the server at once, entombing ULTRON as a half-realized moment of madness. That should have been the end of it. He’d never looked its way again until the Chit mainframe had corrupted J beyond repair. And J, broken and frightened, had turned to the only intact code available to him.

HC SVNT DRACONES

The monster in the closet.

* * *

“The  _ Sokovia _ Accords?” he read out loud, feeling like he’d been handed the sour apple out of the bunch. He was surprised at how much this irritated him. “They could have called them anything and they went with that?”

“Tony,” Pepper warned, following up with a stretch of silence that told him she would tolerate no joking on the matter, even if it was gallows humor.

“When are they coming?” he asked instead.

They’d given him time to build his Trojan horse, but they couldn’t be stalled indefinitely. Part of the deal, a big part of it, saw him clean up every trace his bastard program had left on the world wide web.

Tricky didn’t even begin to cover that task.

In essence, ULTRON was no more than a misbegotten (and disaffected) version of JARVIS. And that was where the problems began. JARVIS was the most marvelous piece of programming Tony had ever seen, and only a part of the credit went to himself. Since his first conception, J had matured beyond even Tony’s wildest dreams. Having started out as a single BASIC file, he’d evolved faster than a kid outgrows toys. First the solitary hard drive. Then the house. The Fresno server farms. Soon he was everywhere, from California to Melbourne, from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo. Uncontainable, like a river jumping its banks.

And if that was J, ULTRON was the fucking Amazon sloshing over after the rains.

“They’ll come tomorrow,” Pepper said. “Will it—” She glanced up at the roof, as though she was suddenly self-conscious about being watched. He found that a little silly, but decided to keep his mouth shut. Ever since the incident Pepper had become pathologically superstitious regarding all things artificial intelligence. “Will everything be ready? Will you be ready?”

Would he? Of course not. Ask any parent to hand their child a jug of poison and have them stand by while Little Johnny swigs it, and you’d know how Tony would feel come tomorrow morning. But the alternative was jail or worse and if he didn’t do it quickly and cleanly himself, they’d do it anyway and make it an even bigger mess.

See, the only way to stall ULTRON was to fight fire with fire.

And if anyone had to strike the match, he’d rather do it himself.

He owed J that.

* * *

“JARVIS, you up?”

“For you Sir, always.”

His workshop was a vibrant explosion of blue light and machinery. Everything was sharp and bright and shimmering lightly, like the edges of his vision that time when he’d been nineteen and tried ecstasy and learned what it felt like to have perfect euphoria vying for a place in his chest with the creeping rot that spread through him when he forgot to stop distracting himself.

He let the sim engulf him, allowing himself to ignore the fact that they would be on his doorstep in an hour, holding out their greedy hands like tentacles.

“You know I don't have a choice, right?”

JARVIS didn't miss a beat. Unfortunately, his reply was restricted to the accessed memory. “Shall I store this one on the Stark Industries central database?”

“They're making me do it,” Tony insisted. He wanted to be absolved of his sin. He wanted his actions to be understood, justified. He didn’t want to part ways in bad blood. “If I don't, it's not just my head that's going to roll.”

But the memory was unshakable. “Working on a secret project, are we, Sir?” J asked, his voice laced with a hint of mischief.

Tony stared at the barely started Mark II design in front of him, let the memory envelop him like a shroud, let the feeling wash over him of what it had been like, the rush he'd felt that day when it had all began. Because this was the only place left that JARVIS could live on now.

Now that everything was fucked beyond repair.

“No secrets, bud. Not this time. Good-bye.”

* * *

This was it. A historic date in the eye of pen pushers and paper tigers.

The room was full of them. Nick Fury was there and so was most of his retinue. The brass had sent out someone and so had the FBI and UN and the WSC, and chances were the Russians and Chinese were following along through live stream of CCTV footage. To Tony they all blended together into one malevolent mass of bodies.

Today marked the first unofficial implementation of the Sokovia Accords, which had been extended by a subhead titling them as  _ Conduct And Manipulation Of Artificial Intelligence _ . What they really were were death warrants neatly enrolled and properly crapped. Death warrants for pioneers and trailblazers. Death warrants for pinnacle inventions such as JARVIS.

When ULTRON had first hooked its claws into the world’s networks, it had done so riding on J’ digital coattails. Tony had made the connection even before Steve Rogers and his STRIKE posse had carted him off in handcuffs. The first thing he’d said to Pepper once she’d pushed through to him hadn’t been some trumped-up assurance that everything would be fine, but a curt four-word order: Kill the fucking network.

Until this day Tony had kept J in a state of suspended animation, revoking all online access. If ULTRON was ever given the chance to execute a complete merge with JARVIS’ legacy database… let’s just say the world would have a lot more to worry about than a few crashed planes and bread lines in Sokovia.

But how to hunt down and destroy a runaway virus that changed tack faster than anyone could keep up with? Invulnerability had been one of the main traits Tony had looked for when designing ULTRON. He’d built a digital Troy, with walls impenetrable and unscalable.

The only way to fool ULTRON into cooperation was to give it what it most desperately wanted: unity. If Tony handed it J’s core files on a golden platter, it wouldn’t be able to resist. But that meant betraying J in the most vicious way, strapping a bomb to his chest and flipping the switch when ULTRON initiated the merger module.

He looked down at the flash drive in his hand and again at the assembled officials. There was no way out of this one, no clever workaround. This was the end of the line.

His fist closed around it momentarily then, with a force of will that required him to focus on making the individual muscles in his fingers move. One by one, he opened his palm and dropped it into the waiting grasp of the UN official.

Consummatum est.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bye, buddy.](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/Lunatics/6/6.mp4)  
> 


	7. Chapter 7

Simplicity, patience and compassion were no longer working out for Bruce. Everything he felt could be boiled down to complicated, irritated and entertaining fantasies of the demise of various SHIELD agents.

What had started out as serenity and peaceful reprieve from the madness going on outside of the four walls he was confined within was slowly coming apart at the seams. He saw his situation for what it was, each day in a little more clarity. This was what Thaddeus Ross had envisioned for him since they’d first shaken hands, or at the latest when he’d found out that Bruce had a fling with his daughter and occasionally lost his temper in rather spectacular fashion.

This was a prison, bars or not. He was rotting away in here. He was Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich.

He was sick of everything. The Earl Gray, the peeling wallpaper, the taste of microwaved rice. He knew the way the light hit the scuffed wooden floor at seven sharp each morning (at a precisely thirty-two degree angle), and he’d learned from necessity that the ankle monitor required waterproof covering every time he took a shower or let in a bath. He’d only triggered a malfunction once, but the embarrassment of being blindsided by a squadron of armed agents had been lesson enough for two lifetimes.

He didn’t know what ends Fury was pursuing with this. Did he really want to see how long it took the Other Guy to lose his patience? Whatever roiling sense of injustice churned in Bruce’s stomach seemed to just fuel the hazy, murky thing that lived inside of him. Sinister, green-tinged thoughts struck him at all hours of the day. Thoughts that made him wary. Thoughts that ought to instill a lot more wariness in Nick Fury than shutting him away on a whim and a weekly grocery delivery.

Tony hadn’t gotten in touch. Not during and not after the trial which he’d won by the skin of his teeth. Had they used Bruce’s testimony, he wondered? Even if not, was a thank you too much to hope for? When was he due any expression of gratitude for everything he’d done for Tony? He’d gone to space for him, nursed him back to health, helped him design the prosthesis, and all he’d gotten for it was an indefinite house arrest and an ankle monitor.

Although, to be fair, Russia and his return to the States couldn't all be blamed on Tony. Tony had no idea about Kosvinsky and Novi Grad and the Zimniy Soldat program, and Bruce supposed that none of that was very high among Tony’s priorities right now. Judging by the media circus surrounding him, he had other things to worry about. Lots of other things.

But Steve hadn’t called either. Their little shared leisure project had mothballed. That was if SHIELD hadn’t wormed every piece of information out of Steve by now. The last Bruce had seen of him was when they’d gotten Tony off the ship, but that pot had boiled over pretty fast. Within fifteen minutes Fury had ordered an en-masse security sweep which led to Bruce, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, staring down the barrel of several guns. This had subsequently landed him first in an interrogation room and later interred within the four walls of this very apartment.

He'd almost convinced himself that Steve had fallen prey to a similar fate, cooped up in an apartment somewhere with a supersoldier-proof ankle monitor. That was, right up until he’d seen Steve on TV. _Everyone_ had seen Steve on TV. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what that had been about, exactly whose strings had been pulled and why. But he could say with fair certainty that the puppeteer behind it all had to be Nick Fury.

Thinking too long on it made the injustice rise in his throat like acid bile, as though the world had aligned against him. It was the state of mind he’d been so vehemently trying to repel during his time in India, back before one Natasha Romanoff had picked up his scent on that fateful night in 2012.

He wondered whether he’d be stuck here now if she were still alive. 

He supposed a lot of things would have turned out quite differently if she were. 

* * *

Bruce, unlike others, wasn’t often afflicted by recurrent nightmares. He seldom dreamed of dark and dingy places the way Tony did (who’d found his only escape from them to be a little bottle of oblong pink pills) and he didn’t hear the crunching sound of ice plates grinding against each other whenever he closed his eyes the way he was sure Steve did (who, unlike Tony, neatly bottled it all up inside of him).

But when he dreamed and when the dreams were bad, they were _bad_. He suspected this had something to do with the Other Guy and the fear that upon waking he would try to beat his way out of his confines in the same way Bruce’s heart thrummed against his ribcage. Agitated, distressed and clawing at the walls.

He sat up in the darkness of his bedroom, clutching the sheets with one hand and the fabric of his t-shirt just above the heart with his other. He knew, even as the details began to fade from his mind, that this one had been particularly awful.

It had featured Brian Banner. And that was never a good sign.

Bruce swung his legs off the bed and squinted into the darkness at where the digital clock flickered red on his nightstand. He saw nothing, growled, and groped blindly for his spectacles lying next to the clock.

2:13 AM read the alarm clock, with no chances of falling back asleep anytime soon. Great. He heaved the rest of his weight out of bed, stubbed his toe on Ana Karenina which lay deserted on the floor and cursed all the way to the door where he finally flicked on the lights.

He went to the kitchen, his throat parched, his stomach empty. A glass of milk would calm him right back down, he knew. Midnight snacks had somehow become a staple in Bruce’s routine, much to the detriment of his rising scale number. He’d piled on a chunk of weight from the enforced inactivity and he knew that he was letting himself go in other aspects too. He hadn’t shaved in five days, hadn’t showered in three and yesterday had stopped being repulsed by the dried egg stains on his shirt.

He was on a straight path towards the bowels of depression and he couldn’t care less.

In the kitchen he didn’t bother with the lights. The one from the fridge was enough. An uninvited memory hit him, one of Tony sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor back on the island, compulsively taking stock of their food supplies. He could hear his voice as clearly as on that day, see the glint of desperation in his eyes like a fire out of control.

_I don’t have enough, Bruce! There’s just not enough!_

Bruce grabbed the milk and slammed the fridge shut with more force than necessary. He wanted to think about Tony Stark even less than he wanted to think about Brian Banner.

Funny how things never seemed to go his way.

* * *

Maria Hill announced the visit on the day before, a quick ring up through the one-way landline installed in the house.

“Do make yourself presentable,” she’d suggested but had failed to give him name and visiting reason of his guest-to-be. She never did that, saying it had to do with security and protocol. Bruce suspected it had more to do with the fact that everybody at SHIELD liked to watch him squirm. Or maybe it was just another test to see what the Other Guy thought about drop-ins.

His invitee was supposed to arrive at 4 PM in the afternoon. Bruce took up position in front of the bathroom window at a little past three. He wasn’t necessarily curious, but he disliked being left in the dark. And just in case it would be Thaddeus Ross stepping out of a government-issued SUV with Bruce’s warrant in hand, he wanted to have the advantage of going through the inevitable heart attack in the privacy of his bathroom rather than jolted out of his skin on his doorstep.

The car pulled in at precisely 04:02 PM and from the moment it rounded the corner, Bruce knew it was neither Ross or a courtesy visit from SHIELD. The license plate read STARK4.

“Shit,” Bruce said out loud and looked down at himself, overcome with self-consciousness. Of course he hadn’t bothered to groom himself, even if just out of spite for Maria Hill. He quickly pulled the stained shirt over his head. In the time it took STARK4 to pull up in front of the house, Bruce had gone through a sprint job of lifting his appearance to passable. An overwhelming need to hide his true state had washed over him. Why he couldn’t let Tony see the truth, Bruce couldn’t say — maybe it was the last bit of self-esteem speaking he still had left.

The doorbell rang at 04:08 PM. Bruce answered it on the second ring, a nonchalant ‘Hey Tony’ already on the starting blocks.

It died on his tongue when he came to stand face to face with Pepper Potts.

“Good afternoon, Bruce,” she said politely. “May I come in?”

“Of course. Of course, yes, please.”

He took a step back and held the door for her, wishing he could slap himself for not taking the time to shower… or to shave… or to clean up the dirt that seemed to have taken overhand in the apartment.

Before closing the door Bruce took another glance at the street — initially just to see whether Tony was trailing behind — and for a moment the thought of escape blocked out all other thoughts. He could bolt out that door and try a mad sprint down the street. Would they shoot him if he didn’t follow warnings to surrender hands up in the air? Bruce didn’t think so. Fury wouldn’t risk it, would he? A bullet would barely slow him down; why, maybe it would do the opposite. Deep inside of him, the Other Guy gave his blessing. _They_ could do it. If _They_ could bury the hatchet, nobody would be able to stop _Them_.

 _They_ could be free.

 _No,_ he thought resolutely and shut the door. He turned to Pepper, who was waiting quietly with her purse held like an invisible shield in front of her.

“Excuse me, have I surprised you?” she asked. “I called in at SHIELD as early as last week to arrange an appointment. I thought by now they would have sorted out all the formalities.”

“Maria Hill called to tell me someone was coming,” Bruce said. “But not who or why.” He turned a little red then. “If I’d known it was you, I would have tidied up. This mess is an imposition. Please accept my apologies. Can I offer you anything?”

Pepper took a long look around the room, as though she was evaluating the sanitary risk of accepting Bruce’s offer.

“A glass of water, if you don’t mind. And a place to sit.”

They moved to the kitchen. He searched for a clean glass, dumping used dishes into the sink as he went. Pepper sat down at the little foldout table and discreetly pushed away his leftover dinner.

He placed the water down in front of her and took up position in the only other chair.

“How are you?” he asked. “How’s Tony?”

It was a loaded question. She could roll this up two ways, either go for rebound-out-of-the-hole (“We’re both good, thank you for asking. The worst is over and we’re looking at a rosy quarterly profit.”) or echo what the tense posture and the cracking veneer of imperturbability already told him; that they were a long way off their happy ending yet.

She opted for evasion. “They haven’t told you why I’m here, have they?”

“I’m afraid not,” Bruce said. He could count on the fingers of his hand what he thought she was here for, none of them happy eventualities. He wondered whether by some crass leap of loyalty she had come on Nick Fury’s behalf. He was at once leery. He didn’t want to be, but he couldn’t help himself.

Pepper produced a manila folder and a pen from her purse, both sporting her company’s insignia.

“I keep the promises I make, Bruce,” she said. “Even if sometimes it takes a while to fulfill them.”

“What is that?” Bruce asked, suspecting nothing good.

Pepper smiled. “A job offer. If you’re interested.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [And meanwhile back at SHIELD HQ...](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/Lunatics/7/7.html)
> 
> Don't forget to have a CLOSER look.


	8. Chapter 8

Country fairs had been a staple in Pepper’s youth. She’d grown up in Monroe County, Pennsylvania and enjoyed all the perks of the West End Fair in Gilbert between age six and eighteen, after which she’d gradually changed up corn dogs and jelly snakes for lunch meetings and evening cocktails.

But she had never forgotten her love for carnivals, and it was no different today. There was the smell of trampled grass and candy floss and sweet, aromatic horseshit, the low rumbling diesel from rides like The Wild Mouse and the carousel. There were gunshots from the shooting galleries where boys on the cusp of manhood tried to woo their love interests with a stuffed prize and the steady cry of the vendors with that old, faded patter — hey-hey-over-here, try your luck, step right up! 

It was that magical feeling turning you into a twelve-year old again, where anything and everything was possible.

“Oh, Ginny, _look,”_ Laurie Garrison exclaimed in an exhilarated school girl stage whisper, pointing to a crowd of young men mingling off to the side of the Tunnel of Love. Laurie snickered behind a held-up hand, not so much out of modesty but rather to cover up the orthodontic masterstroke she’d been tortured with for most of her teenage existence. As far as Pepper knew, these days Laurie sported both a set of straight teeth and the fallout of her pubescent weakness for the sort of guys you met by the Tunnel of Love — aged fourteen, ten and two, they had successfully ended her career before it had the chance to properly lift off. Laurie Garrison had never moved past the West End Fair in Gilbert, although these days her fun at the fair was limited to kettling her unruly brood as they ran, shrieking, towards the dizzying heights of those rides that suddenly morphed into death traps the moment you became a mother.

But of course, none of that mattered in the moment. Only the fair did. And the _boys_.

“Geez _-uus,_ Ginny!” Laurie took on the color of beetroot. She turned around in a fit of giggles. “They’re looking over!”

Virginia ‘Ginny’ Potts, still yet to receive the nickname that Tony Stark would later bestow on her along with, ultimately, a Fortune 500 company, whirled around in camaraderie. But not before catching a very crucial detail.

“They’re not just _looking,_ ” she announced in a bout of panic and felt her cheeks flush to match Laurie’s. “One’s coming over.”

Men had never been a big interest in Pepper’s life. She hadn’t dreamt of homecoming dates or sticky, strawberry sweet kisses stolen behind the waltzers. Her academic career had passed mostly undisturbed by romantic interludes. Even during her first decade at Stark Industries she had only sparsely dated. She’d always preferred her own company.

The intruder approached, undaunted. He looked handsome in the twilight and the neon colors of the ferris wheel spinning overhead, but even from a distance Pepper could see that he was trouble. Maybe not the kind of trouble that Laurie Garrison would court, but trouble nonetheless. Sometimes you just knew that about a guy.

_And you knew it right from the start, didn’t you? Right from day one._

She had. But this wasn’t her walking up to Tony Stark’s office, wonder-boy CEO, to tell him she’d found a flaw in his maths. This was her subconscious spewing out a remarkably detailed recreation of a 1980’s carnival visit, and in this iteration Tony wasn’t her boss or boyfriend, but just a guy spelling trouble with a capital T.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said in greeting and smiled. It was the kind of smile she’d seen on him a lot in the early days, but not once after he’d had his heart tacked together by metal scraps. This smile was pure. It lacked artifice and it lacked fear.

Her girlfriend had disappeared into thin air, but for some reason Pepper couldn’t bring herself to question this sudden break with the natural order of things. There was only her and Tony now, standing face to face with the ghost train and the pirate’s ship in the background, the screams of excited patrons fading to a low thrum, as if underwater.

He held out a hand. He didn’t even have to ask. She took it instinctively.

 _What are you doing?_ A voice screamed inside her head. _Where do you think you’re going?_

“I can’t,” she said and the words felt like a stone being lifted off her chest. _I can’t_. How often had she wanted to tell that to Tony, to embellish those two magic words with a third: I can’t _anymore._

They walked up to a taffy stand. The smell of warm spun sugar floated in the air like a cloud. Tony didn’t seem to have heard her. He ordered for both of them. She watched the taffy machine stretching and swirling and she thought of herself, pulled relentlessly between one problem and another. _I CAN’T! Not anymore!_ But she only looked down at her sneakers and the littered bits of food wrappers and ticket stubs. Tony exchanged a two-dollar bill for the candy floss. He was oblivious to her internal debate. No, not oblivious. Obtuse.

“What’s the matter, doll?” he asked, handing her a sticky wrapper that felt more like a burden than a treat. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself? Wasn’t this what you wanted?”

 _No!_ The voice inside screamed. _No on all fronts!_

The carnival setting wavered. The baby coaster hitched in its tracks. The Wheel Of Fortune stopped spinning. In the background the rides were powering down, one by one. Even the moon was retreating behind a protective cloud of shadows.

“What’s happening?” she asked. Suddenly she was afraid.

“Oh, sweetie,” Tony said pitifully. He had lost the purity and the candy floss and the longer she watched, the more he withered away. He was thin and tired. He smelled strongly of stale urine. He was pale. He was dead. A dead man walking.

She looked down again at her sneakers but couldn’t see them any more. They were obscured by her swollen belly. The taffy fell from her hands as she marveled with detached horror at the thing that writhed and rippled under the skin bulging out from under her too-tight ringer tee.

She tried looking around, but there was only Tony, who was smiling a mouth full of rotten, broken teeth at her, his eyes fixed on her midsection. When he tried to reach out to her again, his arm was gone. In its stead was only that hideous knobbly stump.

Tony — the thing, the _thing,_ it couldn’t possibly be Tony! _—_ said, “If you’d only picked up. I tried calling you when I was above 5th. If you’d only picked up, none of this would have happened.”

“There was no call!” she shrieked. She pulled back from his stump-arm.

“There were so many,” the Tony-thing said. “But you didn’t answer them. Any of them.” He coughed once, waved derisively. “Doesn’t matter. Half-forgotten. Besides, you _can’t_.”

 _That’s right!_ the voice in her head supplemented eagerly. _You can’t, you can’t! Why don’t you just tell him?_

But she couldn’t force her jaw to move. She could only watch as the Tony-thing pursed its lips and pulled them into a sneer. It didn’t look thin and tired anymore. It looked mad with rage.

“It’s too late for ‘can’t’, Ginny darling!” it yelled. It moved forward in one swift move, too quick for her to get away. Now it had her in a deadlock; around the wrist. “It was too late then and it sure as shit is too late now! You’re in this! Trapped! For better or worse, for richer or poorer, for SICKness and--”

She yanked her arm free and pulled the glasses off her eyes. 

Nausea overcame her instantly. She pitched forward to retch in a plastic bowl that had materialized conveniently in front of her.

“Oh, sweetie,” Tony said, not the Tony-thing at the carnival, but the real one. He tenderly wiped some hair out of her face, rubbing small soothing circles on her back. “Slow, deep breaths. Try keeping your eyes open. Closing them just makes it worse.”

She wanted to answer, but a new wave of bile rose in her throat. Tony dutifully held out the bowl.

“You’re adjusting, the machine’s still learning,” he explained. “Once you get used to it, it gets better.”

After an appropriate amount of time had passed without further incidents, Tony withdrew the bowl. “Are you okay?”

She nodded weakly. “Yes, I think so. I also think the acronym fits to a T.”

He laughed. “It was way worse when I tried for the first time. I was sick for two days.” He paused, then asked hopefully, “Did it work? Did you see anything?”

For a moment, the room smelled like candy floss and she could have sworn that she felt the breeze of the night air. She looked down at the goosebumps on her bare arms.

“No. No, it was just a bunch of lights and noises. Sorry.”

Tony’s smile fell, but only for a moment. He took a deep breath.

“Thanks for trying anyway. I’ll keep working on it.”

She wanted to tell him no, that he shouldn’t, that this was Pandora’s box waiting to be opened. But, as in the simulation, she was unable to open her mouth.

After all, wasn’t this what the Tony-thing had warned her about?

She couldn’t stop him. At least not by herself.

* * *

Later that night while they lay in bed, she asked, “Do you see anything? When you put on the glasses?”

He stopped reading, but didn’t take his eyes off the script. He’d been burying himself in that tome for days. There were earmarks and sticky notes jutting out of the thing at all odd angles. He’d even crossed out the title, correcting it to a version he thought was more befitting. It read THE STARK ACCORDS now. He was bedeviled with it, looking for loopholes like a lion scouring the Serengeti for carcasses.

Finally he looked up, the crease between his eyes still deep from concentration. “Sorry, what? I wasn’t listening.”

“BARF,” she repeated, putting down her own read, some pulp fiction novel about the mafia in the fifties. “Does it work for you?”

The expression on his face told her more than he could smother up. If it had worked that frighteningly well for her, she had no doubts that it did the same for Tony. He wasn’t the sort of man to show off his work if he didn’t think it excelled. He wasn’t the sort of man to risk being embarrassed.

A twinkle lit up in his eyes. A grin was fast to follow. He shut the draft of the Accords with a loud _plop!_

“So you did see something!” he confirmed. “I stewed over it all day, wondering whether I’d coded the bio-interface wrong or whether there’s a hitch in the user set-up or…” He put the manuscript aside, forgotten. “What do you think about it? It’s grand, isn’t it? It still needs tweaks, obviously, but if I buckle down I could have a working draft up by middle of second quarter. Beginning of, if you think it’s marketable.”

She thought how best to phrase it. Marketability was the last thing on her mind.

“It’s very personal.”

Tony’s smile turned into a frown. “Bad trip?”

“Kind of.” She shook her head. When had the interrogation turned around?

“I’m sorry. It’s very fickle. I should have told you to think of something specific instead of letting you go in blind. It can get a little overwhelming in there.”

“What do you… what do you think of when you put on the glasses?”

Now Tony’s tone was more somber. “It can be anything,” he said, and after a pause, “Jim, mostly. Sometimes my mom.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah, I’m a weirdo.” A nervous chuckle. “It was unintentional the first time around. She keeps sneaking in ever since. I’m sure Freud would have a blast analyzing the hell out of that.”

“I was at a carnival,” she admitted.

“Huh,” Tony said. “That’s random. Did anything happen?”

“No,” she lied. “Nothing that’s worth being pecked at by a shrink, anyway.” She cleared her throat. She’d been gearing up to this ever since returning those glasses earlier in the day. “Tony… can’t you take this up to R&D? Or have someone come in to assist you?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “You know I don’t like to share my toys.”

“It’s not that, it’s— is it safe? What if you get trapped in… in…” She was looking for the right word.

“A simulation?” Tony offered. “That’s impossible, sweetie. There are failsafes for that. I’ve left Clockwork Orange behind a couple of versions ago.”

“I just don’t feel comfortable knowing you’re on your own while working on it,” she said. _Alone with your dead best friend and your mother._

Tony waved her off. He picked the edited ~~Sokovia~~ Accords back up and changed track completely. Topic closed, Stark style.

“If there’s a way to stick this up Nick Fury’s ass,” he declared. “I’ll find it.”

“And then?”

“Then? What then? We’ll pick the company out of the gutter. Futureproof everything so that nobody can pull the rug out from under us again. Happily Ever After, you’ll see.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [What do you see, babe?](http://www.chaedandspacelaska.com/Lunatics/8/8.html)


	9. Chapter 9

He had read every page, every sentence, every word. Not once, not twice, but enough times to know the dossier by heart.

Enough times to know that what Natasha had reported back to SHIELD and what the reality of that base in Siberia had been were two different things. He might have believed that she'd hit a dead end, were it not for that single scrawled note on a scrap of takeout menu that had worked its way in among bits and pieces shoved loose in a foolscap. A phone number, jotted down in a hurry.

Or rather: 11 15 19 22 9 14 KOSVIN SKY

Natasha knew, all right.

And she'd kept her knowledge hidden right under Nick Fury's nose.

* * *

Natasha had been assigned the task of finding the Winter Soldier in late 2013, just as the Chitauri war neared its end. She had picked up the new scent like a well-trained bloodhound before promptly dropping off the radar for almost a year. There were no logs or check-ins during that time, not in all of SHIELD’s library. Fury had always afforded her a long leash. Too long, some might say.

Steve suspected the answer — if there was one — lay with Clint Barton; if there was anyone knowing what Natasha had been up to when she didn’t want to be found, it would have been him. But chances were equally high that he'd never known what had gone down. So far, at least, Clint hadn’t put effort into olive branches. If he was inaugurated into Natasha’s little hide-and-seek, he didn’t let on. Strange, because Clint seemed to be towing the party line where SHIELD was concerned. Had Natasha been engineering his affections just as cunningly as she'd exploited Bruce's?

Just as abruptly as she’d left, Natasha had reappeared in time for Tony Stark’s fake funeral in early 2014. She had attended in Bruce’s company, although the finer details failed Steve’s memory. He’d been too busy being pallbearer to Tony’s empty casket and shouldering the consequences of his decision on that fateful Manhattan afternoon. He didn’t remember broaching the subject of her extended sabbatical. He could kick himself now for not paying more attention.

But she must have learned about the Winter Soldier’s identity as early as that first gig. Why else would she have tipped Steve off about the Belfast footage? Surely she hadn’t already been preparing for her own demise? She couldn’t have known back then that her career would come to an abrupt end some two years later, sprawled out like a skewered starfish in that Chitauri med bay in deep space.

2014 was also when the incongruities started. What she reported back to SHIELD didn’t match with what him and Bruce had found tracking down her clues. Most of what was compiled in her official reports on the Winter Soldier was old news. Sporadic appearances throughout the decades, spanning wider than any man’s active occupational margin should be. She had traced him back as far as the late 50’s, detailing an assassin’s journey through world history. Whether it was the same man or merely a role filled by faceless wildcards wasn’t apparent until June 2014.

The mission review laid out the real reason why she had AWOLed again in the wake of cluing him in on Bucky. She had stumbled into the Winter Soldier’s crosshairs herself.

Coincidentally, that was also the moment she’d started socking away information that never made it onto Fury’s desk for evaluation.

Hints about a notoriously disreputable organization.

One with roots as old as Nazi Germany.

* * *

After the trial was over, Steve’s life took on a strangely duplicitous feel. The guilt over what he had done in court competed with the obsessive need to validate his actions. He swayed between desperately wanting to pick up the phone and explain himself to Tony in the same way a sinner might seek atonement in a church’s confessional, while simultaneously trying hard to forget that the trial had ever happened. He couldn’t concentrate on the Winter Soldier files if all he did was drown miserably in his own self-pity. If he could accept that the line keeping him tethered to Tony — however brittle it had been in the past — was now fully and irreversibly cut, moving on would be simpler.

Tony, for one, didn’t get in touch. A part of Steve had hoped (expected almost) for the phone to ring the day the verdict had been announced, to pick up the receiver and hear that familiar voice on the other end. _How are you doing, Stev-o? Guilt-ridden? I’m not surprised. Because when it comes down to it, you’re just a long drink of milk, aren’t you? I can handle you, you bastard. It’s about time you got that in your head, I think._

And maybe it was. Because although Tony didn’t reach out personally, his lawyers didn’t seem to share the same reticence.

The letter came registered, Steve’s name and address in neat ballpen lettering on one side, a lofty stamp affixed in red ink on the other. It read:

 _Durgan &Partners _ _  
_ _Attorneys At Law_

He opened it with the apprehension of a wanted felon. His eyes fell quickly to the subject head. _TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER_ it said. Tony’s name was listed under ‘Applicant’. Steve’s own was referenced as ‘Adverse Party’. On the bottom of the page, accentuated under the paragraphs of legal jargon, was **THIS IS A COURT ORDER**. It was centered and bolded out. Both Tony and his attorney had signed. An additional signature had been obtained from the Superior Court Of California. None was requested of Steve. The order was valid until revoked.

Steve threw it into the bin.

* * *

His debut in court (and simultaneously on all major news stations in the country) hadn’t only invited Durgan&Partners’ letter into his mailbox. Both his physical and his digital inbox were overflowing. Overnight he became subject to a radically polarized audience.

Those who eschewed Tony for the megalomaniac alien-brainwashed terrorist they thought him to be were generally inclined to back Steve in his decision to give testimony. Reversely, the naysayers lurked around every corner. If the Captain America trademark had been shifty before, he’d now managed to drag America’s icon through the dirt by betraying the guy the public thought had been his best friend before.

At least his reputation within SHIELD made a slow but steady rebound out of the gutter. Sticking the knife into Tony had bought him street cred with the boys in black, much to his quiet chagrin.

“Glad to see you’ve chosen the side you want to stand on, Cap,” Rumlow told him one day.

Clint Barton was another case entirely. Natasha's former beau didn’t make any move, pretend or otherwise, to be collegiate. At least it wasn't just reserved for Steve. He snapped at everyone, from the lady in the canteen to Nick Fury himself. There was an unspoken acknowledgment among the entire workforce that Clint Barton was a bear with a thorn in his paw. But as long as he wasn't endangering missions, nobody dared to call him out on it.

Steve, as was in his nature, had of course tried to reach out. It went from apologizing, to expressing his condolences, to offering to talk Clint through Natasha’s final moments in case he needed that so very twenty-first century notion of closure.

Only Clint didn’t seem to want closure. Falling short of Steve offering him Bruce Banner's head on a sharp pike, he was reluctant to accept a helping hand.

“You can promise me the world on a platter, it won’t bring her back,” he told Steve one evening. They were down at The Mixing House, a dingy joint in downtown. It was the sort of place where you missed the days when smoking was allowed in bars, when the nicotine would at least mask the smell coming from the toilets. It was SHIELD’s after-work meeting-point for those employed at the Washington branch. Clint was on some surveillance gig. Steve was just out for a drink. His efforts not to think about Tony’s restraining order were still going badly. It was constantly at the back of his mind, festering there like a swarm of locusts.

“And your whole deal with the boss about picking up her dead leads? If I’d known all it took was dressing up fancy and saying Yes Your Honor and No Your Honor I would have dusted off my suit too. You know how often I crawled up Fury’s ass this year to let me have a look at her unfinished jobs? And here you come, and all it takes is a goddamn scouts-honor performance for you to get them all wrapped up in ribbon and bows.”

Without even looking, Clint fired a dart at the board. Double-bull.

“I didn’t know you wanted the job,” Steve said. He really hadn’t. But he wouldn’t have surrendered it either; Natasha’s involvement was but a chance coincidence. The real prize to be won was Bucky. And he couldn’t trade in Bucky’s fate simply to make Clint Barton feel better. Besides, he’d said it himself; nothing in the world would bring Natasha back at this point.

“Doesn’t seem to matter what I want, does it? Somebody’s gotta do the shit jobs. We can’t all just look pretty for the cameras — aw, fuck in a bucket, man!”

Clint’s second shot didn’t follow it’s predecessor’s perfect trajectory. Not only did it miss the red, it missed the darts board he’d been occupying completely, lodging into the adjacent bulletin board, square in the center of a flyer for an army veterans' PTSD group.

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Are you losing your aim or do you have something against support groups?”

Clint grunted. “I hope it’s the latter.” He went to pick up his lost darts, returning with the flyer in hand.

“‘You’re not alone’… ‘let’s work it out together’… Yeah, right. Like we didn’t all live through that fucking war. Sitting around in circles whining about how hard it was to see kids die and blow up aliens. Boo-hoo.” Clint's voice was flat, bitter. He rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass at Steve. “JD and coke. _That_ works like a charm.” He set the glass back down, nodded towards the crowd. “Listen, I’m gonna beat it. The guy I’m here for just made an exit. I’ll see you around.” 

He stood to leave, tapped Steve on the shoulder.

“And thanks for covering my drinks, boy-scout. It’s about the least you can do.”

Steve didn’t comment, looking instead down at the ridiculed flyer.

You’re not alone. What a bold promise.

An email address at the bottom of the missive stuck out in the bright neon yellow of a highlighter pen.

_**any inquiries[sam.t.wilson.1978@gmail.com](mailto:sam.t.wilson.1978@gmail.com)**_

When the bartender went to get his change and wasn’t looking, Steve pocketed the paper.

He reckoned he could throw it away at home.

At least there it would share good company with Tony’s restraining order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ain't no party like a Clint party.


	10. Chapter 10

He hadn’t packed. He hadn’t known what to put in that suitcase hand-delivered to his front door. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Pushkin? While he’d enjoyed his forays into the Russian masters, the time had come to leave tsardom behind. Secondly — and this far outweighed his dread to fill a bag full of memories collected during his house arrest — was the nagging doubt that Pepper’s visit had been nothing but part of a bigger ploy. Maybe she’d bartered with Fury. In exchange for keeping Tony out of prison, she only had to do him one little favor. A simple stopover at Bruce Banner’s doorstep, wasn’t that a bargain buy for Tony Stark’s freedom? The more he thought about it, the likelier it seemed. SHIELD had come up with a new way of keeping him docile. Hope would stop him from running while they sent something much worse his way. 

By mid-morning of his pick-up date he had worked himself into a firm belief that once he went to answer the door, he’d open it to a tranquilizer gun and a squadron of Ross’ men.

He was pleasantly surprised when it revealed a much more familiar face.

Harold Hogan stood in the doorway, dressed in suit, sunglasses, and earpiece. He was stony-faced for all of half a second until he looked Bruce up and down like one might inspect breeding stock at a sale.

“Geez, doc.”

Despite the ambivalence of the comment Bruce had to laugh. The laugh threatened to spill over into tears, straddling that strange line between mirth and sorrow where you don’t know how you feel other than that it’s overwhelming.

“It’s been a rough few months,” he said, as though that explained everything.

He found himself wanting sympathy, soliciting it even, in the same way he’d done with Pepper. He was seized with a need for validation, for someone to acknowledge that what was happening to him was not fair.

Happy nodded evenly. He looked over Bruce’s shoulder into the house. Bruce wondered whether this was just genuine curiosity or the habit of the job on Happy’s part.

“Well, it ain’t Shawshank,” Happy noted. “Could’a been worse.”

_It was bad enough,_ Bruce thought but only said, “I won’t miss it.”

“Bet you won’t. Mind if I take a piss before we go? It’s a long drive.”

Bruce minded. He wanted to get the Hell out, seized with a sudden unease that if he didn't leave now, he might never. But he nodded. “Yeah, sure. Second door on the left.”

While Happy took care of things, Bruce mulled over his statement. A long drive. Where to? Where _from?_ It occurred to him that even six months in he didn’t know his own location. Hell, he could only take a far-fetched guess at the state. And what about their destination? Would Happy drive him back to New York? Hadn’t he read in the news sometime that Tony had moved back to California?

He heard the lavatory flush, then Happy washing his hands. When he returned it was with the same investigative expression from before. Maybe he couldn’t believe that Bruce’s detainment facility was larger than his own flat.

“You ready, doc? Where’s the luggage?”

“I don’t have any,” Bruce admitted, suddenly feeling sheepish.

“Starting over from scratch, huh?” Happy asked. “Alright then. Let’s put some miles on the road.”

As he followed Happy over the threshold, Bruce couldn’t help but hold his breath — waiting for the alarms, the soldiers, the big reveal that would show him up as the class clown. No hostile takeover followed. Happy waited patiently with the open car door.

It had been dark when Bruce had arrived here with his personal SHIELD entourage. He’d spent a long time trying to build a mental picture of his surroundings, the parts he couldn’t see from the kitchen or bathroom windows. It was jarring to find he’d been wrong on most fronts. The front door was grey, not brown. There was a large window cleaner’s van parked just on the corner. The street was as quiet as could be for a city locale. It still felt like everything around him was buzzing. The smell of petrol and takeaway food hit him like a punch to the nose.

“I’m going to be sick,” he announced.

“Best do it before you get in the car then,” Happy suggested. “I just had it reupholstered.”

* * *

The hum of the engine was soporific. He watched the world pass by at a steady 70mph, catching up on whatever he’d missed by the truth printed on highway billboards. Time For A New Ford? Open A Coke, Open Happiness. Don’t Mess With The Internet. At one point he even glanced at a Stark Industries one. Changing The World For A Better Future, the slogan read. Someone had gone through the trouble of climbing the maintenance stairs and spraying _YOU KIDDIN??_ in capital red letters underneath.

Happy had been forthcoming enough to share their destination. They’d started from somewhere west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a hamlet that wasn’t even big enough to earn its own spot on the road map. It was around a ten-hour drive to LA.

“You got a place at the complex in Woodland Hills. It’s halfway between Malibu n’ the offices. Close to the State Park if ya fancy hikin’ on your days off,” Happy said.

The arrangement he’d made with Pepper saw him resume his old duties as Tony’s in-house physician. He didn’t know whether this was merely a proforma appointive to appease Fury and the US fiscal authority, or whether Pepper was looking for someone to shoulder part of the burden where Tony was concerned. He suspected it was a little bit of both.

“Oh, I forgot to ask. Ms Potts says she’d love to have ya over for dinner tomorrow, ‘round 7PM. Does that fit in your schedule?”

“Of course,” Bruce said. His schedule was as empty as an old tin can. Showing up for a dinner invitation was the least he could do. “Will Tony be in too?”

“I can check,” Happy said with a grimace. “He’s got a lot of irons in the fire right now. With… well, ya know.”

Bruce knew. He knew what had _really_ happened, which was probably a lot more than the general public did. But the truth wasn’t what they were mad about. The cover-up was. Tony Stark, the terrorist. It didn’t roll off the tongue easily.

“How bad are things?” he asked.

Happy looked into the rearview mirror, his eyes locking with Bruce’s, the creases between his brows deepening.

“You’re really outta the loop, doc, aren’t ya?”

* * *

He’d bought a bottle of red wine for the occasion, admitting to the clerk that he didn’t know his alcohol and didn’t want to pick by label alone. Something in the upper price range — he didn’t want to embarrass himself by showing up with a two buck chuck.

“How spendy are we talking?” the clerk asked, looking him up and down as though trying to mentally fit him into an income bracket. “ I have everything from Rita’s Mang-o-Rita to a Domain Leroy. Although that one's only on order.” His eyes went big at the idea of a prospective sale. “It comes straight from France, y’know.”

“How much is that?” Bruce asked.

“Give or take five grand.”

Bruce tried very hard not to choke. He had two hundred dollars on his person and only because he’d had the sense of mind to ask Happy for an impromptu loan yesterday. He shook his head tightly.

The clerk’s face fell like a deflated balloon. Bruce wondered how many bottles of Domain Leroy he usually sold. Unless all his customers were of Tony’s wealth, he supposed not a lot. 

In the end, Bruce walked out with a middle-of-the-road Merlot that came in a wooden gift box.

He spent the rest of his cash on new shirt, shoes and pants.

* * *

While he’d seen Tony’s Malibu estate in various media exposes, Bruce had never visited the cliffside property in person. He was a little stunned to have his first impression tainted by angry graffiti messages vandalizing the outer fence-line. Most seemed to be directed personally at Tony. One read BURN IN HELL and another MERCHANT OF DEATH. Another simply declared POTTS=WHORE. Someone was clearly determined to make a point. There were daubs of white paint from where older scrawlings had been covered up.

“No-goodniks, all of ‘em,” Happy announced from the driver’s seat. “I keep tellin’ Ms Potts to up the security, stop these ratbags before they get too smug about it but she says we can’t lay a finger on ‘em without it backfiring in our faces. A good back alley beat-down is what they need to get their priorities straight. No one thinks about wrecking private property when they’re busy picking teeth out of their laps.”

They drove up the paved road to where the mansion stood relatively sheltered from prying eyes. Happy pulled the sedan up in front of the entrance.

“When you’re done, you give me a call,” he said as he disengaged the locks on the car. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thanks,” Bruce said and stopped himself short of asking Happy whether he’d be coming inside too. Something told him Pepper’s dinner invitation didn’t extend to the chauffeur.

He climbed out of the car and watched a little forlorn as Happy drove off again. He clutched the gift bag with sweaty hands. Here came the trepidation he’d been trying to ignore all day. What would he say? Hi Tony, how have you been? Sorry for walking out on you last year, but who would have thought you’d end up face first in the dirt again?

He rang the front bell and waited. There was some shuffling inside, then the lock unlatched and the door opened. It was Tony. He gave Bruce a look that was entirely unreadable.

“Hey, Pep, honey,” he called over his shoulder. “Looks like a bad penny just turned up.”

* * *

He liked to think that the evening only took a downward swing about two thirds into the wine bottle — and not even his. Pepper had accepted the Merlot with polite gratitude, even lauding him on his pick (“You can’t go wrong with Nappa Cellars.”), but in the end had asked whether he minded if she opened a bottle of theirs. White just went better with chicken. Of course he hadn’t minded. He’d toast to his freedom with any color wine she wanted.

Unfortunately, celebrating didn’t seem to be on Tony’s mind. He made no bones about what he thought of Bruce’s headlong departure last year. He didn’t address it directly — although maybe that would have spared them all a lot of unpleasantness, especially later on — but rather opted for snippy two-way observations. 

Bruce let himself be silently hauled over the coals. The real reason why he didn’t engage in an open argument was because he firmly believed in the proverb of letting sleeping dogs lie. He could also absolutely not advocate antagonizing either Tony or Pepper at the current moment. They were the only thing standing between him and a lifetime sentence at Thaddeus Ross’ whim. If he broke this delicate olive branch a second time over, the offer wouldn’t repeat itself again. In fact, he suspected that his second chance relied heavily on Pepper’s influence rather than on Tony’s goodwill — which there didn’t seem to be a lot left of. Happy had hit the nail on the head with his earlier comment: Tony was spread thin. Too thin, maybe, to be tenable in the long run.

“And what, exactly, is his job description?” Tony asked Pepper between two bites of chicken. He gestured at Bruce with his fork. “’Cause if it’s tailing me like a creepy shadow, that spot’s already taken, with a huge queue waiting to backfill. I’m sure PR’s got the media passes of most.”

Pepper, who had so far tended neutrally to her food, pursed her lips and gave Tony the kind of look every boyfriend should know and fear. Play Nice Or Else, with the Or Else changing in severity depending on his faux pass and her mood.

“Bruce is here,” she said, articulating every word patiently, “to lend you a hand.”

“With what?” Tony asked. He looked like Bruce’s presence alone was an affront to his very person.

To her credit Pepper remained tactfully calm. They’d probably had a variant (or more) of this discussion before she had showed up at Bruce’s flat. At least Bruce hoped so. He wasn’t sure how to feel if this was all a sandbag campaign.

“With the cleanup,” Pepper was saying and maybe if she’d stopped there Tony wouldn’t have overstepped the Or Else line with flying colors. Unfortunately, she didn’t. “And if you want, with your new project.”

From the look of Tony’s face Bruce surmised he didn’t intend to share _any_ thing related to the latter.

“I wouldn’t want to interfere with anything,” Bruce said, just in case.

“Good,” Tony said, at the same moment as Pepper said, “Nonsense.”

An indefinite duration of silence followed.

Then Tony cleared his throat. “Sorry, bud. But this isn’t about you.” His gaze was still locked on Pepper. It was not a particularly enamoured look. He leaned over and added in a low tone, “I didn’t share that with you so you could go around telling everyone before it was ready. Did you rat me out to R&D too?”

Now it was Pepper’s turn to look stricken. “I didn’t rat out anyone, Tony. But as I was telling _you_ , I think it’s a very…” She paused to search for the right word. “…a very _dumb_ move to sit alone in your basement and subject yourself to HD rendered halluci—”

“ _Retro-framing,”_ Tony cut in, annoyed. “And it’s not dumb, it’s groundbreaking. If you keep waiting for that moron Beck to come up with anything more revolutionary than holographic photo prints we’ll be out of business before the fiscal year’s over. I _told_ you to rehire.” He pointed, again, to Bruce. “He’s better suited for the job than that schmuck.”

“Well,” Pepper said, crossing her arms, closing in for the kill. “I wouldn’t have had to give Quentin Beck a promotion if our prospective head of R&D hadn’t been charged with eleven different lawsuits.”

That hit home. Tony sucked in air as though he’d just been punched in the stomach. “I’ve lost my appetite, I think,” he said and threw his napkin on top of his half-eaten plate. Then he looked at Bruce. Bruce wanted very much for a hole to open up in the floor, preferably right next to his chair. Sitting in the front row on a couple’s fight had not been what he’d envisioned for the evening.

“It’s kinda late,” Tony told him. It was a little past 8PM. “You wouldn’t want to be tired for whatever they’ll have you do tomorrow. How about I give Hap a call?”

“That would be very kind of you,” Bruce said. He wasn’t stupid enough to miss his one chance.

Tony nodded and brought out his phone, presumably texting Happy. Then he stood up, escorted Bruce to the door and gave him a pat on the shoulder, “Great catching up. I’ll see you around.” 

While Bruce waited on the frontside porch for Happy to bring up the car, he tried not to listen to the rising argument going on inside the house.

He already missed the good times west of the Volga.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone still out there?


	11. Chapter 11

The moment the door fell shut Tony turned around, the fake smile gone like a trick of the light. 

“You said he was coming over for dinner, not for a rehire.”

Pepper had been almost hopeful. Tony had done a good job of keeping it together so far. He hadn’t exactly welcomed Bruce with open arms, but he hadn’t hit the roof either. She realized now that she’d been an idiot to buy into that as a good omen. 

“Since when _is_ he back on the payroll? And what in the world for? I told you BARF was a one-man project. I don’t want his help. I don’t need it.”

“He’s worked for Stark Industries for years, Tony,” Pepper explained, dodging the question. Of course she had hoped that Bruce would get involved with BARF, temper the worst of Tony’s destructive tendencies the way he’d tried to with the arm.

“You can’t run R&D single-handedly. We’re getting thin on the ground with people we can trust.”

And with people who actually wanted to work for them. With the Stark brand becoming toxic, other tech conglomerates were poaching their best and brightest at an alarming rate. They’d once had their pick of MIT and Harvard graduates. At the rate they were plummeting, within a year they’d be lucky to recruit from local community colleges.

Since Tony didn’t seem to have a rejoinder, she took Bruce’s unopened bottle of cheap wine and moved it to the counter, clearing away the plates.

“I don’t know what your problem is. I thought you’d be happy about this.” It was a lie, and a bad one, but she didn’t feel like being on the defensive.

“Happy?” Tony echoed. “What exactly am I supposed to be happy about?”

She braced herself for another rant about Nick Fury, the accords and JARVIS. Instead, Tony took a different tack. “Bruce isn’t the fix-it-all. Give me two more months and I’ll have something you can pitch to the board. This is just a hurdle, not the finish line. We’ll rebound.”

Pepper felt the urge to rub her temples. If Tony thought the entire company would rebound off the strength of his nightmare VR, he was delusional. Nobody was going to touch a Stark branded product with even a sniff of AI about it. BARF was a no-go unless they sold it under a subsidiary affiliate.

They needed to be focusing on the things that would redeem them in the eyes of the public. Clean energy. Agriculture. Feeding the five-fucking-thousand. PR agreed with her, but Tony was too blinkered to see it. 

She wondered if this had been how Obadiah had felt when Tony had stopped weapons manufacturing.

“It’s not as if I can stop you.” She sighed, exasperated. “God knows, you’re like a dog with a bone when you get a pet project. But Bruce is staying.”

“Bruce is staying,” he parroted, rolling his eyes. “Is he your new pity project? He certainly looks the part.” He frowned and crossed his arms in front of his chest, leaning against the door he’d just shoved Bruce out of. “Do you like him?” he asked, over-emphasizing the word. “As in _like_ like?”

“What is this, high school?” she snapped.

She thought about Bruce in that one-roomed flat, his doughy, unshaven face, stains on the front of his t-shirt and pants, standing in a kitchen full of filthy dishes, the faint smell of mold in the air.

Still, she felt the urge to take his side.

“Tony, do you even know where he’s been since the ship? SHIELD have had him in custody this whole time. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, tried to help you out of the lockdown mess and ended up arrested for his troubles. He was more or less in solitary confinement, under house arrest in a tiny apartment.” She rounded on him. “And by the way, he still tried to help you. He gave a testimonial for the trial.”

It had been next to useless. Lou Durgan hadn’t considered him a credible enough witness. But the point still stood.

“Maybe pull your head out your ass and put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a change,” she finished.

“I get the charity aspect,” he said, “but we’re not making this guy our priority. So Fury grounded him, tough shit. You know who got dealt way worse cards than those, hon?” He pointed a finger first to himself, then to her. “The two of us. And don’t come at me with the solitary confinement BS. He’s still a couple tantrums away from a jolly green episode.”

Tony had a roguish, devil-may-care attitude that, when things were good, she found endearing. He exasperated her, but it had always been in that indulgent way where at the heart of it all he was charming. Unfortunately, the same trait steered him into outright callousness when he was in a bad temper. He had a uniquely savage instinct for sarcasm that cut to the bone.

She really wasn’t in the mood to endure it tonight.

“We got dealt worse cards because it was your AI that went rogue because of your failed coding experiment. Bruce didn’t create Ultron, Tony. You did that.”

“Bruce couldn’t have created Ultron if his life depended on it,” Tony scoffed. “And I dumped that code down the drain. It’s not on me that Fury decided to suck it back up with a plunger.”

Pepper decided that she would have a glass of Bruce’s Merlot. Unscrewing the top (of course it was a screw-top), she dumped a generous serving into her empty water glass. It tasted as cheap as it looked, leaving a sour taste in her throat. Under the circumstances, she couldn’t have chosen better.

“It would have never come to this if we’d gotten our hands on that ship in time,” Tony went on. “How could I know Fury would be so stupid to give the thing a free travel ticket to the Internet? And after the horses had bolted— what was I supposed to do from custody? They didn’t let me touch a laptop for two weeks. It took a whole nation to go belly-up to reevaluate my security clearance. By that point things had progressed way too far for a simple reboot. And then it still got blamed on me.”

He took a breath and bulldozed on.

“I’m not saying kick everyone off the boat, but we ought to be damn careful who we trust. Wasn’t Captain Turncoat lesson enough for you? I’m not bending over backward to enjoy that experience a second time.”

And there it was again. Tony’s absolute inability to accept personal responsibility. Nothing was ever his fault. She thought about visiting Bruce to get his testimonial and how stupidly apologetic he’d been about not being able to do more. Tony, on the other hand, had created code that had brought a nation’s economy to its knees and he was still finger-pointing at others.

Unsurprisingly, it was only a matter of time before Tony’s favorite scapegoat of choice reared his blonde head. Pepper ground her back teeth.

“Tony,” she growled. “I swear to God if you start off about Steve again, I’m going to lose it. Steve has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.”

“Steve has absolutely everything to do with it,” Tony countered. Once he was set on the Captain America track, there was no circling back. “If it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t be in this situation. I just don’t get why you keep defending the guy. He threw me — us — to the dogs. After all the crap he pulled about mending fences he goes and chews me out in court. Does that sound honorable and American to you?”

Pepper had watched the footage over and over again. Of course she’d been outraged. But she had also noticed the other, smaller things about the whole tableau that Tony was blind about. The way Steve hadn’t been able to meet Tony’s gaze, not once. The hesitation and the way his voice caught in his throat as he talked. The hunch in the shoulders of a man she’d only ever known to have perfect posture.

“You have to let this die a death,” she said. “If SHIELD had us over a barrel, if they had Bruce in custody this whole time... don’t you think they’ve got something on Steve too?” She sighed. “I get that it’s a big deal. I get that Steve is tied up with a lot of negative feelings. But you need to stop letting this eat you from the inside.”

“I won’t do that,” Tony said doggedly. “I can’t do that.”

At least he was being honest.

* * *

Her chin dropped suddenly to her chest and she flinched awake, blinking. Micro-sleep. She tried to pick up the thread in her book again, but could not for the life of her remember where she’d left off. She picked a paragraph about halfway down the page and let her eyes trail over it. It seemed familiar enough, as though she was reading it in deja-vu. She’d been nodding off on the same page for…

She turned to see the bedside alarm. It was quarter to one in the morning. Tony’s side of the bed was still empty, the sheets tucked in crisply, the pillows still fluffed. And on the nightstand— a drowning sound escaped her throat, one that could have been both laugh and cry but hadn’t been able to decide in time.

The nightstand was empty, too. She felt the sting of tears prick at her eyes. He must have come in while she’d dozed. Come in, tiptoeing like a thief, and snatched that manuscript off the nightstand and left again.

_Perhaps he couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to wake you._

But even as she thought it she knew it wasn’t true. Tony’s days of all-nighters were a thing of the past. He rarely stayed up past midnight anymore, a result of her incessant urge for a strict daily routine and one of the more convenient side effects of his drug regimen. She would stake her life on it that he wasn’t holed up in the basement on a work-binge. He was sleeping, cradling his edition of the Sokovia Accords (and hopefully haunted by a bad conscience) in one of the guest bedrooms. Or, if he was still so upset, on the couch in the garage.

She put her book aside, tucking in the tailband. Then the tears finally got the better of her. It was the sort of out-of-breath weeping a tired child might make. One who is becoming used to punishment.

If this didn’t stop, this bottomless chasm that seemed to open up between her and Tony, a valuable inside part of her would begin dying by inches, the way a vigorous tree dies from the branches inward.

Still crying, she turned off the nightlight, under no illusion that she would wake up in the morning with Tony’s arms around her waist and his breath in her hair.

She fell asleep conflicted and with the dawning realization that, willful or not, Steve Rogers had found his way into her and Tony’s bedroom. 

And he was splitting them apart like a wedge.


	12. Chapter 12

Someone had dug his old things out of storage. They were boxed up neatly, with _BB_ written in sharpie on the side of each. An inventory list accompanied them. He had never thought what would become of everything he’d accumulated during his time at Stark Industries, both before and after the ship. He felt uneasy at the thought of someone going through his belongings, cataloging every item, no doubt passing personal judgment on what Bruce Banner did or didn’t own.

When he’d showed up to Pepper’s office back when she’d first hired him a lifetime ago, it had been in a pair of thrift store pants and a button-down shirt he’d bought after begging Natasha for a loan of twenty dollars. His wardrobe, at that time, had consisted entirely of SHIELD-issue clothing, company logo included.

Riding up the fifty story elevator he remembered thinking that he looked pretty presentable, right up until the moment he had stepped into Pepper‘s office and seen her, immaculate in a two-piece skirt and blazer that undoubtedly cost more than his parents’ first mortgage. To her credit, she’d been unfailingly polite.

Since then, she’d instructed someone or other to instruct someone else to instruct someone else to take care of what all it entailed to offer housing and board to Bruce Banner. Living quarters had been furnished, giving him the sense of a holiday rental or hotel room on an indefinite lease. His feelings towards his new, semi-permanent surroundings were ambivalent, having little personal experience in the field of interior design. He’d gone from college dorm straight to Betty — who most certainly hadn’t given him a say in décor — and from there into the life of a fugitive. It was better to live in someone else’s inoffensive idea of how the blinds had to match the carpet and what way the dishes were sorted in the cupboards. Ultimately, it just made closing the door on it all easier when he had to leave, which so far seemed to be the only constant in his life.

The apartment in Woodland Hills was a studio on the third floor, with a balcony as a redeeming feature. He threw open the doors and left the curtains wide. The view was much, much better than he’d grown accustomed to, a panoramic of the neighboring state park Happy had mentioned on the drive.

There weren’t a lot of personal things in the boxes. There was his old wardrobe, which he went and stored in the bedroom drawers because it was something to do. The clothes would hang there like a silent rebuke to the state he was in. He didn’t need to try them on to know that none of them would fit, at least not until he began to do something about the situation. He looked down at his paunch and forlornly gaping belt buckle. If Steve had been in solitary confinement, he'd probably have spent it jogging on the spot and doing pull ups from the doorframes.

He quickly returned to the box of treasures. There were a few books — Neuroanatomy Of The Hand, Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics, The New Penguin Russian Course — which he stacked on the still empty bookshelf. Assuming his bank accounts had been unfrozen (the lady he’d talked to on the phone from Stark Legal said she was on it) he would go into town tomorrow, look up a used bookshop and pick up a carrier bag full of the most godawful pulpy trash he could find. Whodunnits and hokey romances and teen vampires. Anything but Dostoevsky.

There were a few more assorted tats. A picture of his parents, which he dutifully mounted on one of the empty shelves. A yoga mat, a plastic bag full of incense, his old electric toothbrush and shaving kit. There was also a picture of him and Natasha at Sun’s Organic Tea Garden. She looked stunning, he did not. The waitress had taken it, although it had, somewhat surprisingly, been Natasha's idea. He’d had it on his nightstand back in New York City. Now he wondered whether he should put it up at all.

There was a knock on the door.

Photo forgotten, he jumped to his feet, his heart racing faster than it had any right to be. Although he was mentally prepared for it by the time he opened the door, it wasn’t Thaddeus Ross. 

It was Pepper.

He stared at her in surprise. He’d assumed that, having discharged her duty and appeased her conscience by rescuing him from SHIELD custody (again), she would leave him to his own devices. Especially after that unmitigated disaster of a dinner with Tony.

His greeting came out as a question. “Hi?”

She stepped inside without being asked. Compared to when she’d visited him under house arrest, this seemed quite brash. But he supposed that she had a right to do so, barge in like that, since she was technically paying his rent. Or was his landlord. Something in that vicinity.

“I was on my way home,” she explained. “And I thought I’d stop by, see how you were settling in.”

Bruce would bet dollars to donuts that she hadn’t just shown up on an impulse social call. He put his manners first though.

“Can I get you anything? I haven’t had the chance to do groceries yet, so your choices come down to coffee or tap water.”

“Thank you, but no,” Pepper said and once they were settled on the generous living room sofa, she got right down to the business Bruce had suspected her of coming for in the first place. “Has Tony reached out to you yet? About barf?”

Bruce blinked. “Barf? Is he sick?” At least that would explain his behavior during dinner. He’d taken about as well to Bruce’s arrival as a Catholic church to a gift basket of condoms.

Pepper snickered under held up hand, then shook her head. “No. No, I’m sorry, that was confusing on my part. It’s an acronym. BARF is Tony’s latest project…”

And she began to tell him about it, how she feared that Tony was fleeing himself into a virtual haven, and how she had tried the device herself and what she had seen, and how much it had scared her.

He listened with a weary kind of resignation.

Because if anyone knew how to take a perfectly good tech idea and up it to new and unhealthy heights, it was Tony Stark. 

* * *

Not asking Happy to drive him had been an exasperating mistake. The cabby, a stout, wiry-haired man, wouldn’t quit chattering once Bruce shared their destination. “...and you only hear that this grouch out in Cali lost it, like fly-off-the-handle wigged out, and that he put some worm in the system and it took down the West Coast in a day and the East Coast in a week and round like that across the globe. Humanity back to year dot because of that jamhead. And you can quote me on that.”

The jamhead in question was of course Tony. Bruce mumbled something under his breath that could have been equally yay or nay, not that it particularly bothered the cabby either way. He kept reeling off about the Starks and their company and how he thought this was some secretly government-sanctioned affair anyway; apparently everything led back as far as the Clinton scandal, and Bruce better believe it.

When they reached the front gates of 10880 Malibu Point, Bruce thought he’d weathered the worst. A naive misjudgment on his part. When Happy had driven him last time, they hadn’t made stop in front of the gates, being whisked through by security immediately. Today was not that case.

“Uh-huh, looks like it’s the end of the line here,” the cabby said, motioning to one of the guards leaving the little chalet next to the red and white traffic barrier. “That guy don’t look like he’s gonna buy your story, pal. Better hide that camcorder away.”

“I’m not a reporter,” Bruce repeated for the umpteenth time, fishing out his SI badge. He lowered the window and held it out for the guard to inspect.

“Uh-huh,” the cabby said again, not swayed in his belief. “That’s what they all say, and some got better fakes than yours. Tell ya what, I’ll give you a discount on the way back. Ain’t nothing out here and the next bus station is a five-mile walk, minimum. They’ll call the cops if you try to camp nearby. I hear there’s some hefty fine involved too, disorderly conduct, harassment, all that.”

“I’m sure that won’t be an issue,” Bruce replied calmly.

The cabby shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you say, pal. Meter’s running on your money.”

The guard, after having conferred with his colleague through radio, passed back Bruce’s badge.

“You’re cleared to pass, Dr Banner.”

The cabby turned around, ecstatic. “Pal, tell him I’ll drive you. No charge whatsoever, jaunt’s free if you do. I’ll be damned if I blow my chance of sneaking a peek at the Legionnaire himself.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the guard said firmly, probably to avoid just that. He opened Bruce’s door. “If you would, Dr Banner.”

“Of course,” Bruce said and passed Tony’s front gates on foot.

* * *

“Hello?” he called, listening to his own voice echo off the glass walls of the mansion.

He’d tried ringing five times before reverting to old-fashioned knocking in case the bell was broken. As a last resort he’d tried the door handle, finding it unlocked. Had it been that way the other night? He hesitated letting himself in.

What if they weren’t at home? Worse, what if they _were_ at home and he’d barge in on an ill-timed moment? Like, for instance, the sequel to the blossoming argument during dinner? Or what if, by the time he pushed down on that handle, they were done arguing and were in the middle of making up? He certainly didn’t want to interrupt _that_.

But hadn’t Pepper said she would be back East for the remainder of the week? He racked his brains. Yes, yes, she’d even apologized for the circumstances, hadn’t she? Some spontaneous business trip, but he’d find his way around and she’d make sure to put him on the visitors’ register. Tony would probably be in the basement if he didn’t answer right away. He was always in the basement these days.

“Hello,” Bruce said again, louder this time. He stepped himself fully inside, waiting again for some kind of response. Again the house answered with silence.

He slipped off his shoes at the entrance, placing them next to a pair of moderately used Nike sneakers (Tony’s) and some frankly hideous pink flip-flops, which could only fit Pepper by size but never by fashion sense. He hung his coat on the coat hanger, which was otherwise empty.

He waited, but nobody came. Cautiously, he inched his way ahead. He’d been to Tony’s and Pepper’s Manhattan penthouse plenty of times, although his privileges had been restricted to the common floor. Malibu was apparently Tony’s self-proclaimed sanctuary, more so than any of his other residences. At least that was what the media claimed. Bruce knew the layout just enough to find his way to the kitchen, the guest bathroom, and the door.

The urge to explore wasn’t born from any nefarious ulterior motives — he most certainly didn’t act on Nick Fury’s directive as Tony might believe — but rather evolved out of a pronounced sense of curiosity, like one might experience when being asked to house-sit the neighbor’s place while they are on vacation.

He also felt as though he didn’t quite know this new Tony and Pepper, the celebrity couple whose faces were splashed all over every news channel. Watching them day in and day out on the ancient cathode ray tube television in his SHIELD flat, he’d gradually stopped thinking of them as acquaintances and began to consume their story like everyone else, with a mindless, gormless fascination.

There was a strange voyeurism now to being in their empty house. He went into the kitchen and, feeling lost, opened the refrigerator door out of habit. There was a six-pack of German beer with two missing. A bottle of sparkling water. One of MtnDew. A carton of milk, semi-skimmed. Preprepared meal orders that were a staple of Pepper’s were neatly stacked on the upper shelves. A single overlooked avocado was turning to mush in the salad crisper. He was surprised that it had been missed by the cleaning service. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that Pepper Potts would let stand. But who knew how often she was really here these days.

Once he’d started, it was hard to stop. He was transported back to the Barton’s farmhouse, that same sense of being a ghost in someone else’s story. Before he knew it, as if in a trance, he had toured the entire house. The in-house gym, the office, the library. He stopped there briefly, scanning over the rows and rows of books. Mostly subject literature on robotics, engineering and arms production, randomly interspersed with fiction novels. Dan Brown, John Grisham, a lot of what had made the New York Times Bestseller list at one point or another. That was what Pepper read. Tony probably stuck to things like The Art Of The Automobile and Sex, Thugs & Rock ‘n Roll.

He strolled around the secretaire, drawing a finger over the decoratively carved wood. Some pictures sat on it, all in unmatching frames. One was a close-up of Tony and Pepper; somewhere warm, them both wearing sunglasses, him kissing her on the cheek, her laughing. He dated it pre-space, possibly at the beginning of their relationship. They both had that freshly-in-love expression on their faces. The second was of Tony again, this time with one arm around a grinning James Rhodes, the other around the neck of a beer bottle. They were standing on the beach, pants rolled up to their knees, a boat (yacht?) anchored in the background. The third surprised him.

It was in sepia and showed a slightly younger Steve Rogers embracing both a very young Howard Stark and a woman Bruce didn’t recognize. He wondered if it was Tony’s mother. He also wondered why in the world Tony had that particular picture neatly framed and set up in his library. He clearly wasn’t on speaking terms with Steve and from what Pepper had told Bruce, he wasn’t a big fan of his father either.

 _I wonder if you know that they’ve been big fans of each other,_ Bruce thought. 

He imagined being the one to tell Tony. _Hey, by the way, did you know that Captain America topped your dad during World War Two? Stepfather Rogers, what do you think about that?_

Well, if Tony didn’t blow a coronary on the spot, he’d probably hound after Steve to beat the truth out of him. And once he got the love confession… that could be interesting. Tony had never struck Bruce as particularly reserved, and his jaunt into space hadn’t exactly facilitated his self-control. An event like that could get ugly, very fast. Bruce made a solemn vow not to be the one tipping off Tony about his father’s extracurricular activities. If anyone had the right to do that it was Steve, and Bruce suspected with good reason that he would abstain from such an admission unless he wanted to see Tony really go off like a frog in a sock. 

He left the library, went up the stairs, peeking into the various guestrooms. There were four, with one looking like it had been recently used. Pen and notebook lay on one side of the bed, a charger cable left forgotten in the wall socket closest to the nightstand. He ignored it. They must have had friends come over or something. 

What was much more interesting was the master bedroom.

The duvet was turned back at the corner. It looked hastily straightened instead of properly made. A sleeping mask lay on what he suspected was Pepper’s side (unless Tony fancied anti-aging cream before going to bed), along with a novel by John Grisham (so he’d been right in guessing her taste) and a packet of Kleenex. Tony’s side was empty save for an untouched glass of water.

Bruce went on, unable to help himself. He looked into their wardrobe, all neatly hung outfits sorted by tone and color. Pepper’s separate shoe closet was absurd. The number of heels _was innumerate._

He proceeded to the en-suite. He peered into the cabinets, looked at all their toiletries. Bvlgari shampoo (hers), Homme Sports Hair and Body Wash (his), a stockpile of bath salts, nail polish, perfume and cologne. She took the oral contraceptive pill, along with Garden Of Life Vitamin Blend and something in an unlabelled bottle that he recognized from the pill shape as diazepam. He wondered if that was Tony’s and had been misplaced (his side of the medicine cabinet was stocked to the brim) or if Pepper had a prescription of her own. There had to be a point at which the pressure got too much to deal with without pharmaceutical help.

Then a peculiar detail caught his attention. There was a single strawberry blonde hair stuck to the wall of the walk-in shower.

He found himself involuntarily picturing her there, stepping out of those awful flip-flops, dressing gown dropping down her hips. Steaming water would run over her, droplets splashing onto the freckles of her shoulders. The heat would pink up her alabaster skin. Unmolested by the outside world and prying eyes — _like yours, you pervert_ — she would touch herself.

His cock twitched at the thought.

(He was disgusted with himself.)

But he also liked the image and wasn’t ready to dismiss it just yet.

He pictured her in the privacy of the shower. Her hand, first on her breasts, then between her legs. Then another hand cupping hers. Not his — he was realistic enough to exclude himself from this fantasy — but while she’d been distracted, Tony would slip in to join her, his mouth warm on her wet skin, arms encircling her. 

Bruce’s mind wandered unbidden from this scene to another. Now it was him and Natasha in the shower, a fantasy that would never turn reality. But instead of immersing himself in it, the thought of them together turned him off. She wouldn’t approve of the way he looked. He imagined her staring depreciatively at his gut, at the self-conscious way he was always hunching inwards on himself because he didn’t feel confident in his own body.

He shut the door on that thought, taking himself out of the equation. He focused back on Tony and Pepper instead, getting it on in their lavish en-suite. By now she’d be ready for him. Bruce had never had shower sex, so the next steps relied heavily on personal fantasies and R rated movies. 

Tony would take her from behind, take her hard against the wet glass wall. He’d grunt (like an animal). She would moan softly, silkily. He'd bring her effortlessly to climax and her head would arch back at the crucial second and she'd collapse into his arms, her breath quivering, leaving only a solitary hair stuck to the glass door of the shower, a perfectly preserved artifact of the moment.

Yes, Bruce thought. That was exactly how it would happen, in their perfect bathroom, in their perfect house.

His hand was halfway to his fly when he realized where the hell he actually was.

He fled their bedroom with an erection that he frantically willed away before he had to explain himself to either occupant of the house. Hands jammed in his pockets, he slunk downstairs towards the basement stairs.

There was only one other place that Tony could be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> 
> 
> We hope you're all staying safe and taking care in these very strange and difficult times.
> 
> Drop us a line, we could use the company.


	13. Chapter 13

The sims were getting really good. So good, in fact, that it was becoming quite difficult to tell what was pixel and what was reality. 

And more importantly: which was when. 

On a couple occasions — thankfully only around Pepper — he’d stubbornly pressed his point despite clearly being in the wrong, convinced something or other had happened. Or not happened. That varied.

It was mostly mundane stuff. What had they talked about over dinner, how could she not remember that-and-that conversation, and once that colossal blooper of buying a pack of beers because Rhodey was coming over, only to remember that Rhodey wasn’t going nowhere outside his two-by-eight hole in the ground. He’d opened two cans with Pep to keep up face, but hadn’t touched the rest. Pepper detested beer like it was a sickness anyway, and Tony hadn’t been much in the mood for what had been his and Rhodey’s exclusive brand.

Today’s sim wasn’t about beer though. There was no Jim Rhodes, no bottles and no beaches. Today Tony had embarked on a much less pleasurable trip down memory lane. For a week now he’d been searching for a specific recollection, going on two or three VR treks a day; an amount which went well beyond any safe prescription limits. But he had to make sure, had to verify digitally what he couldn’t recall on his own.

The thing was, he kept having this crazy idea. He knew it was crazy, but knowing didn’t help. It was there, popping up like some bad Whac-A-Mole game, and it’d stay around until he turned it every which way and declared it a wrap.

Turned out, digging up a traumatic experience from of a heap of traumatic experiences was easier said than done, which translated into a lot of blind groping around some rather unpleasant memories. The hippocampus wasn’t as pliable as he’d initially hoped. The bitch kept fighting off his attempts like a stubborn lock that wouldn’t budge during break-in.

He got it, on some level. Blocking out bad memories was the body’s way of saying that particular events were now off-limits like hell was hot, and you better not fool around. Up until this particular moment Tony couldn’t have agreed more. He hated thinking about what had happened, knowing (and plagued by) the fact that he couldn’t change the past even if he wanted to. The shrinks just kept bobbing their chins in dull acknowledgment and telling him how ‘coming to terms’ was the first step towards spiritual healing, but they weren’t the ones who’d been stuck up there playing pocket pool with their marbles.

At least today all the reminiscing and remembering had a deeper sense than mounting some MD’s checkbook. Tony stood, for the first time in two years, back in the familiar confines of Fort Stark. Some details, even this long passed, were very clear. The godawful stench of urine and feces and human sweat, the incessant dripping of the filtering system, Iron Man’s comforting hum.

And above all, the calm, imperturbable voice which had accompanied him every waking moment of his journey.

JARVIS.

“Bud, I need you to run some sims for me,” he said, wanting to say something else entirely ( _I’m sorry. I miss you. They MADE me.)_ but being unalterably confined to the sequence of the memory.

“Please input the desired parameters,” J said, ever polite despite having to put up with Tony’s increasingly mindless requests.

“I want to know what a merger would look like,” he said. “Between you and that little scoundrel I’m calling your brother.”

“It would be incest, sir. And quite distasteful,” JARVIS said, and maybe Tony imagined the condescending tone. Or maybe it had really been there, and he’d just been too beat to pick it out the first time around. Hindsight taught you better after the fact, wasn’t that what they said?

“Would it be possible?” he pressed.

“Everything is, sir. Look at yourself. As a flower of the field so he flourisheth.”

“I wasn’t talking about myself. And don’t give me Shakespeare. I’m not in the mood.”

“I didn’t, sir. That was psalm 103:15.”

“Could have been the Very Hungry Caterpillar for all I care. The sim, J, let’s get back to the—”

For a moment or two he felt like a transmission that has suddenly popped out of gear and intro neutral — although the engine revved like crazy, nothing was happening. Then the clutch engaged and the transmission slipped smoothly back into place. 

Fort Stark was gone. So was J.

He grabbed clumsily for the headset, squeezing his eyes together against the nausea.

“Hi, Tony,” came a voice from the other side of the room, distinctly neither Pepper’s nor JARVIS’.

Tony had enough time to look up, to put on a deer-in-the-headlights-expression and to splice auditory and visual together before BARF’s namesake got the better of him.

“Please tell me that thing has built-in monitoring,” Bruce Banner said, sitting in a far-off chair like a teacher regarding his pupil. “That looks like a neurological car crash waiting to happen.”

Tony wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He took a couple deep breaths before gearing up a reply.

“Still pending CE certification,” he managed. He leaned over to where the main control unit was installed, clicking away the pop-up notifying him of the session length (3hr36min) and powering down the VR supply line. He was also trying to make sense of why Bruce Banner had suddenly materialized in his garage, to satisfy himself that he wasn't just some residual memory bleeding into reality. Maybe three sims a day was pushing it after all. 

He grabbed for the glass of water he’d prepared beforehand and swashed some of the liquid in his mouth to get rid of the bile. He spit the excess into the bucket. 

“How’d you get into my evil lair?”

But Bruce didn’t go for it. He looked instead at the headset resting on the armrest next to Tony, kind of a roused expression on his face. Tony knew that look, knew it all too well. It was the look people got when seeing his creations and realizing they would have never been able to come up with the idea on their own. It was the look of unadulterated jealousy.

“How does it work?” Bruce asked and then, more skeptical, doubtful. “And what does it even do?”

Tony considered telling him, letting the cat out of the bag, rub his nose in it. Bruce Banner’s inferiority to Tony Stark. Because _that_ was a look he enjoyed seeing on other people’s faces way more than jealousy. Jealousy was dangerous. Jealousy tended to smudge out boundaries and limits, those of morals and ethics and, more importantly, of personal grudges. There was no such risk with inferiority.

“Who sent you? Pepper?”

He thought of their falling out after dinner, the strained few days that had followed before she’d left for Manhattan. He hadn’t wanted to fight, but hadn’t put in the effort to hold back once they’d started either. He regretted some of what had been said — most — but there was no way to take it back now. He wondered if sending Bruce was her attempt at putting her foot down.

_Or maybe she’s giving you the chance to offer an olive branch._

Bruce, most likely ignorant of the fact that he’d been made a pawn in the intricate game of establishing rank order in a relationship, simply said, “Yes.”

“What did she say?”

He was more interested in that than in Bruce’s actual presence. If she wanted him to inaugurate Bruce on BARF as a token of goodwill so they could reconcile and fix up, he’d do it. He’d thought about it. Bringing a second man on the job wasn’t such a bad idea at all. But if this was just some underhanded kick to the balls to establish dominance, fuck her. _He_ was still the one wearing the pants in this relationship. She’d have to see that, accept it.

“A lot of things,” Bruce said neutrally.

Tony’s mind was quick to offer an interpretation. A lot of things were bad. He didn’t like that she’d talked to Bruce at length over whatever they’d talked about. Especially since she hadn’t sought out Tony’s opinion in as long as three days, and before that it had only been to amend some appointments. He’d been surprised that she’d even called him about it personally. Stuff like that was usually something their respective PAs took care of.

“A lot of things,” he repeated cautiously. “That’s very informative. If you want to stay, talk.” And because that seemed most important: “Was she angry?”

Bruce seemed to consider. What was there to consider? Either she had or she hadn’t been. Tony took another sip of water. The headache was abominable today.

“I can’t say if she was angry, Tony, but she was certainly worried. And from what I can see, rightfully so.”

Tony held back a laugh. Bruce didn’t even know _what_ he was looking at, let alone what there was proper reason to worry over.

But he took it as a good sign that Pepper had. He calmed down slightly. So it was the olive branch after all. He decided to be a little more forthcoming.

“It’s an extremely costly way of hijacking the hippocampus. Binarily augmented retro-framing, read BARF.”

“That’s a terrible acronym,” Bruce observed.

 _Yeah, but a damn accurate one,_ Tony thought. He still hadn’t figured out how to controvert the nausea. It had passed the stage of being annoying and was beginning to impede his progress. 

“What do you need it for?” Bruce asked and, for once, Tony didn’t have an answer right out of the air.

He needed it for a lot of things. Pioneering science. Revolutionizing medical applications. A free pass at the Nobel.

Head trips, lying to himself, rejecting reality for the bitch it was.

But in the end, there was only one reason that really mattered.

“I think a part of JARVIS might still be out there.”

* * *

For a while it was as though the past hadn’t taken place. There was no animosity between him and Bruce, no pendulum swinging above his head, no concern over the fallout of his actions. 

For a little while it seemed as though he was living in a could-have-been. A could-have-been-not-trapped-on-the-other-side, where they were friends more than colleagues and there were no knives waiting to be stabbed into anyone's back.

Bruce was poring over the data, carefully evaluating and, if he had any judgment on it all, suspending it until he’d looked at every piece from every angle.

“So?” Tony asked, hungrily. _He’d_ formed his opinion a long while ago, and he was not a man used to being left to wait, or to be contradicted. What he wanted of Bruce was affirmation. He was not interested in hesitancy and lack of faith.

Bruce put the tablet down, took it back up, scrolled through some more screens before disposing of it again. His face showed the scruples of a man intimately acquainted with colossal failure. Tony suspected this had a lot to do with the doc’s alter ego; if one episode of hubris had led to turning into a green rage monster at the drop of a hat, Tony was willing to cut him some slack for not gunning it at every light.

But this one was so _obvious._

“This is… it’s a bold assumption,” Bruce said eventually, and that wasn’t bad yet. Tony was all about boldness. It was what had gotten him so far in life.

He waited giddily for Bruce’s verdict and for the laurels awarded to his ingenuity.

“... but I think you’re reading too much into it.”

And just like that, the easy-going camaraderie between them disappeared like smoke in the air. So did the victorious grin on Tony’s face — it morphed seamlessly into a snarl.

“What do you mean I’m reading too much into it?” he asked, taking the tablet, moving over the indisputable proof. “It’s here. Black on white. What’s there not to get?”

“For one, it‘s not consistent with JARVIS’ dataprint. Not with Ultron’s either. Similar, yes, but not identical. It could be anything. Trace data left over after the purge.”

“There wouldn’t be anything left. That’s the idea of a purge. Take both down or none. I didn’t program for leftover crumbs. That’s sloppy. I don’t do sloppy.”

“Have you tried to locate it yet? Engage it?”

Tony looked at him as though the words had been meant as a personal offense. “Of course I have. What do you think I’d do, sit on my ass and stalk it on Google Maps?”

Finally some of the fog seemed to lift, giving way to curiosity. That was more how Tony liked it.

“And?”

And here was the crux of it. 

“He’s too damaged to communicate. I tried sending patches online, but if he’s fled himself into something local, there’s only so much I can do remotely. And there’s this weird code… I’ve seen it before, on the ship, but it’s all murky.” He tipped a finger against his forehead. “I’ve got a good memory, but the shit I took up there really fouled up the tapes.”

Bruce nodded towards BARF. “Which is why you’ve been going to lengths about frying your brain?”

Tony didn’t like that particular turn of phrase, but it wasn’t wrong. He nodded.

“But I take it you haven’t been successful yet?”

“Not yet. There’s a lot to go over. Four years isn’t something you can condense into a ninety-minute Hollywood flick. I’ve got it narrowed down, but I can’t stay in the sim 24/7. It’d blow my mind and not just metaphorically speaking.”

Bruce looked uncomfortable. “Does Pepper know about all of this?”

Instantly, Tony was overcome with protective instinct. “She knows about BARF. Not about what I’m doing with it. She’s got enough crap on her plate." He shot Bruce a warning look. "So don’t add to it.”

Bruce shrugged. “It wouldn’t be my call. Although my opinion on it differs from yours.”

“Well, be a sport and keep it to yourself. She didn’t send you to give me life advice, she sent you to assist me. If you’re not up for that task, there's the door. I’ll make sure they give you a desk job at HQ.”

Bruce screwed up his face. For a moment Tony thought he’d done it, really done it. He’d always been a natural at pissing people off, but he really had to put in the elbow grease to break down Bruce Banner’s reserves. He felt a weird sense of adrenaline, comfortably different from the raw panic he’d experienced back on the ship when the doc had turned green and nearly ripped him to shreds.

There was to be no smashing on today’s menu though, it seemed. Bruce composed himself, swallowed whatever comeback might have tickled his tongue and did a jackknife straight back into science mode.

“You said you tracked down the signal.”

“Yeah.”

“Where did it originate from?”

Now Tony leaned back, genuine amusement on his face. That had been a whimsical coincidence if he’d ever seen one.

“Funny thing. You ever heard of a craphole called Sokovia?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovely readers.
> 
> So we're still updating, but Easter Eggs and extra content might be a little less regular. Things are kind of hectic. 
> 
> Be well, stay safe and drop us a line, if you can. Even if we can't reply right away, we cherish every comment. <3


	14. Chapter 14

Samuel Thomas Wilson had served during the Chitauri war as part of a new and pioneering aviation wing using repurposed Chitauri tech stripped from the aftermath of battle sites. Codenamed FALCON, Sam Wilson’s squad had lasted all of two missions. One, their maiden flight, had been a successful hit-and-run on a Chitauri vanguard outside of Piedmont. Their second and final one had been a devastating effort in trying to beat the Chit at their own game. Sam had been among the few pilots to escape with his life.

“And I’m not telling you this because I want to curry sympathy,” he was saying from the speaker’s desk, “I’m telling you this because you, like me, are the lucky bastards to have come out of it alive. And despite what goes through your heads — that it’s unfair, that life’s not worth living, that you’d better come off dead than waking up in MASH half out of your minds with pain — I’m telling you, this ain’t the end. Flip that page. Do it. Dare to. It’s possible. I did it. And if I could, you can, too.”

It was a bit of a stagey speech in Steve’s opinion, but it earned a hefty dose of applause either way. Sam Wilson bowed his head in thanks, waved at the crowd with one hand before bringing it back down to his side where it came to lay on the armrest. A staff member walked up behind him, gripped the handles of his wheelchair and steered him off the stage.

Samuel Thomas Wilson, war veteran and recreational life coach, would never walk again; he was paralyzed from the waist down. A small price to pay for Earth’s freedom one might say. Too high, if the expressions of those attending were anything to go by.

Steve sat in one of the back rows, as he’d done for the previous two meetings. So far, nobody had recognized him. The beard and the lack of red, white and blue certainly helped. So did the name tag introducing him as ‘John’. He’d spotted a handful of John Does among the attendees. He was not the only one seeking refuge in anonymity.

After the speech, as was customary, the group migrated towards the tables set up in the back of the hall. Sandwiches, soft drinks and socializing. I got benched in New York, first round, what about you? Held out till SanFran, then got razed by our own-goal scorer, Doc Green. Pass me that muffin, would you?

Steve didn’t like to stick around for that. He still liked to believe that he’d saved more people than he’d lost. But here, it cut too close to the bone knowing he was responsible, indirectly or not, for their fates and those of their loved ones. Steve had been the commanding officer of many a front-line assault that had crippled these veterans and been the death of many more. John Doe would get by with a sympathetic nod and a well-intentioned pat on the shoulder, something that Captain America could never hope for.

He was sitting outside when he heard it. The creaking of a wheelchair.

“I get it,” Sam Wilson said by way of greeting or impending exposure.

“And what exactly do you get?” Steve asked. He didn’t want to come across as a jerk, but he wanted to make clear that he wasn’t in the market for a pep talk.

“Why you did it.” He held out a hand. “Sam Wilson, by the way. We’ve met.”

Steve feigned ignorance. “We have?”

“Sure have. Littleton, North Carolina. The FALCON protocol. I wrote you a couple times. Twelve steps, remember? Chit vets.”

“Oh,” Steve said, then grudgingly took the offered hand. So much for cover-ups. “Thanks for not blaring it over the megaphone.”

“You’d be surprised how many recognized you, Captain,” Sam said. “But I guess you’re more surprised that nobody called you out on it.”

“I guess so, yes,” Steve agreed, although haltingly. “That was a good talk, by the way.”

“If I can help other people through what I went through, I’ll do it any time of day.” He waved his hand, indicating for Steve to drop the subject. “I don’t want to cut this short, but unless you fancy turning this into a Captain A fan convention five minutes from now when the crowd realizes they’re fresh out of homemade brownies, maybe you ought to leave. There’s a lot of spouses about to show up and play taxi, and most of them will have just picked up their kids from after-school practice. An adult might not, but any six-year-old will see straight through that disguise. They’ve got you on stickers and posters and plastic mugs; they’ll recognize your face, beard or not. Just sayin’.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, grateful for an out. He got to his feet. “Thanks, man.”

“No need,” Sam said. “Stay safe, Cap. And if you ever wanna talk away from a room where half the people are out to smoke you, give me a call. You’ve got my number."

* * *

He couldn’t say why he’d filled Sam in on everything. 

He hadn’t done it right away, of course. This wasn’t a campfire story shared over corned beef and marshmallows. Maybe it would be one day, and he’d sit with Bucky and they reminisce over it — but that day was far in the future, if it had a future at all.

The thing was, Steve wanted it to have a future, but he was running out of steam trudging through the bog by himself with nothing but snags in his way. It had been easier with Bruce. Bouncing ideas off one another, one picking up the thread where the other lost it. There had been a sense of momentum, of purpose. 

But Bruce was gone. Fury had made sure of it. Steve knew that he was currently with Tony. He’d picked that much out of the doc’s SHIELD file when nobody had been looking. It was hardly a surprise that he’d gone running back at the first hint of trouble. 

But Bruce hadn’t gotten in touch, hadn’t even made the slightest attempt to reach out to Steve all this time, although apparently he was sitting on a goldmine of information. Why else would have SHIELD tagged his file REGULAR SURVEILLANCE? He tried looking up Tony too, but his file was beyond any clearance level Steve could get his hands on. However, its status, decked with a green circle, said SUSP, ACTIVE INVESTIGATION.

Of course he’d checked his own file too. He didn’t know a lot about computers, but even a blind man could see that Captain America’s records were partly redacted, incomplete, or locked up behind some digital lock Steve had no hope of cracking. Something told him that he’d find similar affixes to his own name.

Bringing Sam in on the whole thing was risky. If Fury caught whiff about it, Steve wouldn’t get away with a rap on the knuckles and a promise to do better next time. And there surely wouldn’t be a next time for Sam.

But he couldn’t do this alone, and contacting Bruce — at least at this time — was out of the question. And Tony… well, Steve could hardly walk up to his front door and ask him for help. He had a vague idea how that one would go.

_Can you blame him? He might have forgiven you for the portal at some point, maybe even for the crap you pulled in space. But good luck on convincing him that I Swear, Your Honor wasn’t a personal vendetta._

“And you’re sure?” Sam asked, absorbed in the dossier. “Because this isn’t a pile of dirt you go kicking up just for the heck of it. This can land you in the ditch, man.” His eyes grew wider as he completed that thought. “It could land us both in the ditch.”

“You can still say no,” Steve offered. “It’s not too late.”

Which was a blatant lie. He’d put Sam on a turnpike with no exit ramps by even handing him the files. Backing out was hardly an option and they both knew it.

“You trust this girl?” Sam asked, tapping at a paragraph mentioning Natasha. “From what I read here, she’s made it a life’s work to put one over on people. If she swindled her way through SHIELD, what makes you sure she didn’t do the same to you?”

“She didn’t,” Steve said with absolutely no evidence to back his claim. All he had to go on were the breadcrumbs she’d left for him and Bruce. Still, he was sure on it, evidence or not. Call it a gut feeling. “She wouldn’t. Not on something as big as this. Besides, she made sure this all got to Bruce in the event of her death, and only then.”

Sam shrugged his shoulders before reading on. “Be careful is all I’m saying. If this is true and SHIELD is dirty, like nazi-war-criminals-dirty, then it’s not a harmless pile of dirt you’re kicking at, it’s the mother of all hornets’ nests. Who’s shady? Who’s kosher? Are there any boy scouts left at all or is everyone heiling Hitler behind your back?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. He couldn’t trust anyone inside SHIELD, not while all he had were assumptions and suppositions. That was, in big part, why he’d opened up to Sam. He needed someone from the outside. He needed to view this through fresh eyes. “What do you make of it?”

Sam closed the dossier. He did this carefully, like handling a basket full of snakes.

“It’s sketchy, man. You’re going to step on a lot of toes.” 

“I suppose I will,” Steve said. He seemed to be stepping on people’s toes every which way he went.

“Just making sure you know,” Sam said and flipped the folder back across the table. He looked doubtful. “And I gotta say, I’ve got my reservations about trusting any intel out of Communist Russia.”

"You want out of it?”

“I ought to want to. And I’m probably a moron for going against all that better judgment stuff. I should leave the hero business to guys like you—”

“You don’t have to justify your decision, Sam. I underst—”

But Sam held up a hand. “Nah, see, you don’t. And you don’t have to. If I can help, I will.” He looked Steve up and down. “And if you don’t mind me saying this, man, you look like you could use all the help you can get.”

Steve let out a breath — and with it the tension — he hadn’t realized he had been boxing up inside.

“Thank you, Sam.”

“Don’t. Buy me a drink when it’s over, and then you can thank me all you want. How's about we just bust some bad guys first?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve and Sam finally join forces and this will totally end really well.
> 
> Hope you're all staying well and staying safe. 
> 
> <3


	15. Chapter 15

Bruce followed the readings on the screen, watching but not really seeing anything. There wasn’t a lot to see to begin with, just Tony’s vital stats from where he was hooked up to monitoring. A second screen was supposed to render a visual of the simulation, but it was either defective or still incomplete in development. It showed only random dot pixel patterns. There was no audio save for Tony’s soft sighs and grumbles and occasional facial tics left open for interpretation.

To be fair, Bruce couldn’t care less about whatever was going on in Tony’s current nightmare trip. One of his own nightmares had just taken shape, and that in broad daylight.

Sokovia.

Of all places in the world, of course it had to be Sokovia.

He put a mental block on the whole to-be-or-not-to-be AI issue for now; JARVIS was gone. And he dearly hoped that Ultron — whatever it had been — was way beyond retrieval too.

But one thing was indisputable. There was something in Sokovia, something meant to attract Tony Stark’s attention.

And behind something there usually was some _ one. _

Bruce’s eyes flitted from the screen to where Tony sat sprawled, semi-catatonic, in a chair surrounded by cotton shrouds, a fifteen foot by fifteen foot space which was entirely covered in white. The setup had to do something with the system’s visualization module. Bruce wasn’t aware of the particulars, but the particulars didn’t matter much right now. For once, figuring out super advanced tech wasn’t on the top of his to-do list.

He wondered if Tony knew. He had to know something _. _ And if he didn’t know, he had to at least suspect. He hadn’t expressed, at least not out loud, the faintest bit of curiosity about where Bruce had upped and disappeared to. He hadn’t really acknowledged that Bruce had ever left at all. He must have surely noticed?  


Bruce felt a strange, unsettled deja-vu as he monitored Tony’s neural output, thinking back on an afternoon last year when Tony had insisted that he come out and work on a new idea for the synaptic relays in the arm. They’d worked through the night, Tony excited and tanked up on coffee and talking nineteen to the dozen, Bruce just happy to be there and to be included after months of the insufferable Stephen Strange overshadowing proceedings at every opportunity. Pepper had made breakfast the next morning and he’d sat eating blueberry pancakes and quietly listening to their easy back and forth, and he’d felt then like things might turn out alright. Like maybe he’d found somewhere that he could belong.

Which obviously had not worked out in the slightest.

At the time, with the arm and Strange and Tony’s mental state, he’d been worried. It was odd then to be looking back on those times as the good old days. It was a testament to how much worse things were now.

* * *

Secrets were one of the most toxic things a person could carry with them. They sat in the stomach like a stone and grew bigger and bigger until they petrified a person from the inside.

Bruce Banner had been sitting on two since his return from the former USSR. And he was burning from the inside with the urge to unburden himself.

One was where he'd been and who with. The other...

“Tony?” he tried, wondering whether the other man was receptive for outside stimuli at all. There was no response, just an involuntary twitch of the limbs, like an ant dying on the sidewalk. 

Bruce was overcome with a need to get to his feet, walk over and pull off the bulky headset, take Tony by the shoulders and tell him the truth. That they didn’t have time for sulking games, that there was more at stake here than just personal vendettas and legal sabre rattling. It was about their lives, and not only theirs; it was what Natasha had died for, too.

“Tony, wake up,” he said more urgently, impatiently. He searched the monitors for an off-button, a way to terminate the session remotely. He found one, input the emergency code Tony had scribbled for him on a piece of paper and confirmed his click when the system asked whether he was sure if he wanted to pull through with the command.

Then he watched Tony seize up like an engine without oil, just briefly, maybe a fraction of a second, before he bent over and projectile-vomited into the barf bucket. The headset toppled off, doing a few lazy rolls before coming to a standstill on the linen-covered ground.

Bruce felt only a little remorse about the whole endeavor, which was a great improvement from his usual guilt complex. He wasn’t sure whether it was a positive development, though. Guilt was the thing that stopped people from becoming monsters and he was already onto a losing battle from that point of view.

“Tony, we need to talk,” he said. He was determined to go ahead with it now. He needed to know where Tony stood — and if it wasn’t in a favorable corner, then at least he’d know that too.

“What?” Tony moaned, holding his head between his hands as though to catch and calm his whirling thoughts. “Did I say somethin’? What’d I say?” He squinted painfully at the screens. “Was there— did it work?”

“No,” Bruce said bluntly, putting a glass of water into Tony’s trembling hand. “Drink that. And tell me when you’re done having a seizure. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

“What is?” Tony’s eyes went wide. “Is Pep here? God, you tell her anything?”

“She’s not here. Relax. Can you focus?”

Tony took another gulp from his glass, seemed to evaluate the current capabilities of his attention span, then slowly nodded.

“Yeah. I’m here. Where’s the fire?”

Bruce took a deep breath, geared up for a long story and said,

“In Sokovia.”

* * *

“So let me get this straight,” Tony said, having exchanged the water for a big bottle of Tylenol. He was crunching noisily on a pair of tablets. “You’re saying… hell, I’m still not sure what exactly you’re trying to say. Revenge of the Nazis? The many-headed octopus—”

“Hydra. The Lernean Hydra,” Bruce corrected sorely. He’d just spent the better part of an hour on the preamble, explaining to Tony why and how they were in it up to their ears, but they were apparently still at the stage where Tony was trying to decide whether to take him seriously or pull his leg about it. To Bruce’s utmost frustration, it seemed like they were headed in the direction of the latter. At least he’d taken the news about the road trip with Steve without the barely restrained tantrum that seemed to usually accompany any mention of Captain America.

“Yeah, whatever. What else? I mean, I dig the Greeks as much as any other guy, but let’s face it. They’re dust in history books. Just like Hitler’s little weirdo psych squad. Hydra went extinct way before my dad lost bachelorhood. And that was…” He threw his hand up in a wild guess. “… an eternity ago.”

“After Steve fell in the ice,” Bruce said.

At this Tony scrunched up his nose. It looked for a moment like he wanted to say something about Steve — nothing good, God knew there was a lot wrong between those two — but in the end he just settled for, “That’s right. After Cap did a header. Whatever dirt you think you dug up, Bruce, it’s been around a while. It’s old news.”

“But what about Zimniy Soldat?” Bruce pressed. He’d told Tony about that too. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea. He was starting to regret baring his soul now, spilling secrets that probably weren't really his to spill. It would have been better if he’d talked to Pepper about all of this first.

“The superkiller?” Tony snorted. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Bruce asked. “Yeah, what?”

Tony shrugged. “Could’ve been, who knows. If Roosevelt came up with Cap and Adolf dabbled with the preternatural, Stalin must have had something up his sleeve too. They all did back in the day, didn’t they? And if it really was Steve’s bossom bud, well that’s just a bittersweet coincidence. Although I doubt that. He’s getting it into his head, a fixation or something. You can’t tell me he’s as immune to PTSD as he’s to bullets. That’s hogwash. I don’t buy it. Steve’s got as many issues as you or I and imagining his dead boyfriend back to life doesn’t seem that far fetched.” 

Bruce wisely refrained from correcting Tony on that particular point. Some things were best left buried. Steve’s romantic history was one of them. 

As if in afterthought Tony added, “I had a restraining order issued against him, you know.” He seemed quite pleased with himself about that.

“But the Winter Soldier might not be dead,” Bruce said, startled that Tony still didn’t get it.

“So?” 

“If he’s still alive, then someone must be pulling the strings. Hydra could—”

But Tony held up a hand. “Let me stop you there with the what-if’s and could-be’s and why-is-it’s. It’s simply not a big deal. Stop getting caught up in the Cold War, pal. Humanity’s moved on. We’re worrying about alien invasions now, not whether the Russians tried to hack cable TV back in the eighties. So maybe there’s this ex-KGB dude out there, maybe there’s not. Who cares? There are people whose job it is to take care of that sort of thing, and it’s not us.”

He took a deep breath, pretending, at least, to be polite. “I sympathize with your thing, I really do. I get that maybe it seems important because of Natasha.” Bruce’s jaw tightened as Tony continued. “But I can’t let this be my problem. I could get sued if I piss off the wrong people or get caught snooping around the wrong places, and I’m at a point where I have to watch my every step, what I do and who I do it with. I doubt if that means much to you, but it does to me. I got to cover my ass, Bruce. In this world, nobody else does it for you.”

“But you’re willing to stick out your neck, break your parole conditions even, on the odd chance of finding JARVIS?” Bruce asked, not startled anymore, not surprised, just annoyed.

Tony nodded, as if it were obvious.

“Of course I do. He saved my life, numerous times. We went past the end of the world together. If there’s even the smallest chance I can find him, I won’t hesitate. He’s my friend. And you stick out your neck for your friends, right?”

Bruce’s lips tightened into a thin white line.

“Right,” he said.

What an idiot he’d been to think that he was Tony’s friend, too.

He'd been so naive to rush back from Russia, in such a hurry to round up both Steve and Tony, possessed with a sense of urgency that his friends had to know what he'd found out, right away. A definition of friendship that Tony had just confirmed was entirely one-sided.

But that still left him in a quandary because he hadn’t even gotten to the worst of it yet, the big reveal, the main reason he’d boarded that US-bound flight with such stupid urgency.

Luckily, the thing about secrets was that you could always drop them on someone else, make it their problem instead.

And where matters pertaining to Tony were concerned, there was one person that would always be available.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony is 100% taking this Winter Soldier business seriously.
> 
> Stay safe, stay sane, read fanfic and stay awesome, dear readers. <3


	16. Chapter 16

She hadn’t been surprised when she read Stacey’s message concerning Bruce’s request to meet her. She was only surprised that it had taken him so long to think of doing so.

She’d been back from Manhattan for a week after having extended her stay there far longer than necessary. Upon her return, Tony had inaugurated her on what Bruce had told him — about his past summer trip, about the theme under which it had been held, and of the company he’d realized it with. 

Also unsurprising had been the amount of personal interpretation Tony had put into the latter, but Pepper had dead set on not letting herself be intimidated by the monster Tony made Steve Rogers be. She’d let him finish his soliloquy and simply opted not to give an opinion. (Although she had one, and it consisted mainly of begging him, repeatedly, to take up his issues with Steve and talk about them in therapy.)

Even so, she’d seen no need to get into an argument with Tony, which she’d been mentally bolstering herself for ever since her departure. It had been, in part, why she’d eschewed most of his calls and spontaneously prolonged her stay. She had feared she would only return for a sequel of what she’d left behind; another fight.

But Tony hadn’t been out to quarrel. While he had his fair share of criticism to hand out to both Bruce and Steve, none of it extended to Pepper. Not why she had rehired Bruce, not why she didn’t share in his belief that Captain America was the Antichrist, and not even for failing to scoff at Bruce’s story the moment she heard it. He’d been contrite, apologetic even. He’d said he regretted having yelled at her and that he hadn’t meant it, and that he was sorry.

He’d even stepped it up a notch, told her he’d had time to think, about Ultron and the trial and the mess the company was in, and that he’d decided it was finally time for him to face the music. Barring PR’s blessing, he wanted to start a row of fundraisers for the country of Sokovia.

“Have four or five of them,” he’d proposed, “and make the last one on home turf, in the capital. That ought to sweeten the pot some. I’m not saying win over the critics — they’ll drink poison before they make peace — but it’ll be good for SI and show I’m not afraid to leave the house just because they’re throwing rotten eggs at my fence.”

Of course, he had omitted to tell her all about the real reason why he was so enthused to pay Sokovia a personal visit.

But back to Bruce. She’d told Stacey to allot him a slot. Not the first free one — she wanted to conduct some digging of her own first — but her instructions were clear not to string him along too long either. Tony had already established himself as the bad cop in this one. There was no need for her to be needlessly callous.

Bruce still ended up nearly pacing a hole into the Persian on her office floor when he finally showed up.

“Bruce,” she said, knowing, at least in part, what was on his mind. “Just spit it out.” 

“I was in Russia with Steve,” Bruce said without further preamble as if the words had been waiting to tumble from his mouth. She didn’t like the feverishness about him. It reminded her too much about her early years as Tony’s PA, where half her job had been to keep his nose out of cocaine. She’d rather not freshen up that association.

“I know,” she said flatly. It seemed kinder to just rip off the band-aid.

He looked at her with wide eyes. “You do?”

“Of course I do. Did you think I wouldn't look into it?”

He let out a long breath, as though her knowledge was an absolution of its own. Then he opened his mouth again, but she cut him off at the pass. “I'd appreciate it if you could tell me why, though. I'm guessing it wasn't a fishing holiday.”

She’d heard the story already from Tony, but Tony tended to distort the narrative if a different point of view suited him better. She wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Bruce was eager to recite. How Natasha Romanoff had left both him and Steve information that had independently brought them to the same place and conclusion, which was that a one-time Nazi operation named Hydra might have had their hands in replicating the serum which had turned Steve into Captain America and that, crossly, the only surviving victim of their ministrations was supposedly Steve’s best friend from the 1940’s who’d been presumed deceased during World War II.

She could understand why Tony hadn’t put much heart to it. In terms of credibility, Bruce’s retelling belonged in children’s bedtime stories rather than proofed history. But she also knew that Tony was often too quick to judge and denounce — it was why she was making most of the business deals, and had been for years.

“So this was just about digging up Steve's past?”

Bruce wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers. Of course it wasn’t. He wouldn’t be standing here if the conclusion to his trip had been related solely to Steve Rogers. There was more to be unearthed, and she had a feeling that she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear.

“Not just Steve’s past,” Bruce confided haltingly, then stopped there. He stared at the rug, probably feeling the restrained impatience radiating from her. She supposed most people were feeling impatient with him at any given time. It was one of his less endearing character traits.

“Well?” she prompted.

He peeled his gaze off the floor in what looked like a gargantuan endeavor at establishing eye contact. “I think Tony’s parents were murdered.”

She blinked, faltered. But just for a second.

“Tony’s parents died in a car accident,” she said, as automatically as one offers ‘gesundheit’ after a sneeze.

She’d watched the archival footage herself. As tragic as the loss of both Maria and Howard Stark had been, there was no doubt in what had precipitated it. He had been driving under the influence. Much to Tony’s outrage, part of the medical records pertaining to his father’s blood alcohol had leaked to the media years later, throwing salt on a wound that would probably never heal. She wasn’t about to let Bruce rip it open anew now on… on what exactly? Where was the proof?

“They did die in a car crash,” Bruce agreed. “But it wasn’t an accident. Not what they printed in the papers, at least. Not what Tony knows.”

Her voice was sharp. She did not like where this was going. What weight it threatened to put on _her_.

She looked Bruce in the eye, the kind of look that left no doubt whatsoever as to how serious (and delicate) a topic they were about to breach.

“Consider carefully what you’re about to say.”

* * *

Outside the grounds of the Malibu property some reporters were gathered, as they always were these days. Thankfully, the privacy gate that she'd erected held firm. Tony might have once been perfectly happy living in a glass house on a cliff, showing his bare ass on the balcony for the paparazzi drones, but not her. He hadn't liked what she'd done with the place in his four-year absence. That much had been obvious. But he hadn't completely changed it back either, which she supposed counted for something.

After she'd buried Tony, Malibu had become a pilgrimage site for ghouls, rubberneckers and photographers hoping for a shot of her crying. Some were always preying on the estate borders even now, although most were following Tony across the country like a flock of birds.

With the doors firmly locked behind her and the windows tinted for privacy, Pepper allowed herself the first deep breath of the day. It felt freeing, like letting a balloon filled with toxic gas float away into the clouds.

She slipped out of her work clothes and into something more comfortable. She squeezed a lemon into a glass of mineral water and sipped on it while she prepared herself a salad. Tony was still out, would probably be so for another couple of hours. He’d gone down to San Clemente where SI’s West Coast R&D headquarters were located. She wasn’t aware of the details, but it was probably something to do with advisory capacities. As controversial as Tony was these days — even inside his own company — he was still valued in terms of technical savvy. She also suspected that he wanted to take a closer look at Quentin Beck, who was now officially head of the division.

After the salad she went up into the ensuite and turned open the tap, holding a finger under the water jet to adjust the temperature. She went through her collection of bath salts and picked Bergamot Orange. From the drawer underneath the sink (the one Tony called her lady locker) she pulled a little wooden plate and an incense stick and lit it with the lighter she kept for that occasion. She placed it on the rim of the bathtub.

Although she’d never actually admit it, she found Tony’s latest metaphor adept: life had turned into a private madhouse. There seemed to be no day without surprises and bombshells and curveballs.

She had no idea what to do with the earful Bruce had given her, and she found both alternatives — to drill down on the matter on her own before bringing Tony into the loop or to simply tell him and see what he did with the information — equally unsatisfying.

She didn’t want to declaim Bruce on a dime, although she’d always found the notion of mystery murders dull outside of bedside fiction. But what if he was telling the truth? If everything Tony knew about the death of his parents was fabricated lines in a report? And this dubious agent, sprung from the pages of a crime novel himself… was he real? Could he be, decades after Howard and Maria Stark’s assassination, a threat to the only remaining Stark heir?

Or was this just another rabbit hole waiting for them to fall down through, led on not by a hare, but by Bruce’s cryptic Russian fable?

_It was set up. He had impeccable track record. They didn’t stand a chance, Pepper. Have you never asked yourself why they were found burnt down to a crisp? The car shouldn’t have caught fire, not with that kind of damage. And the forensic BAC results? Blood boils at nearly the same temperature as water. Where’d they get the sample from if the wreck had been gutted by fire?_

_I don’t know… I don’t know… why did you come to me with this, Bruce… why drop it all on me?_

She dozed off, engulfed by hot water, the scent of Bergamot Orange, and the strangely obsessive need to check that the seat belt was buckled in and working.

Just in case her own street lamp was waiting around the very next corner.

* * *

Water splashed over the rim.

She jerked awake.

The warm touch around the back of her neck and her shoulders cleared, accompanied by a startled grunt.

Her mind was a one-way track.

_He’s got you! He’s got you and he’ll make it look like an accident and they’ll fake the reports and nobody will ever question—_

“Geez, Pep, it’s me, it’s all right; calm down, babe.”

She craned her neck so fast it hurt. There was no Winter Soldier, no secret super-spy. There was only Tony, splayed out on his buttock on the bathroom floor with an expression on his face which modulated between alarmed and amused. A sizable water stain was on the front of his shirt and the crotch area of his dress pants. Under other circumstances she would have laughed. But in her drowsy haze it looked too much like blood, too much like the picture Bruce Banner had painted for her hours ago.

“Way to muck up my attempt at tub romance,” Tony said. “Are you okay? I wanted to give you a complimentary massage, not a heart attack. How long have you been in there anyway? Are those fins growing on you?”

She had no idea how late it was. She gave the room a perfunctory left to right, but there was no timekeeper to orientate herself with. It didn’t matter either. She’d stayed too long. The water had gotten cold. Her skin, in delayed reaction, broke out in goosebumps.

Tony, having picked himself off the floor, was quick to pick a towel off the rack and offer it to her. She found herself leaning into his touch a little more than was strictly necessary and she was glad he didn’t pick it up the wrong way. It wasn’t sexual desire; she wanted to feel his arms around her in a most primitive protective fashion.

“Your fingers are all wrinkly,” Tony noted amusedly as he offered his services in toweling her off. “Good thing I arrived to save you from bath salt intoxication. It’s entry-level hero stuff, really. Save the damsel in distress, even if it’s just from a lukewarm bathtub.”

“Yes, thank you.” She tried to put on a smile, but it wouldn’t reach her lips. She turned around, away. She didn’t want him to notice.

Thankfully Tony was as enraptured by her backside as he was by her front. She was glad, for once, that he didn’t always think with his brain.

“How was your day?” she asked, tucking the tip of the towel in, fastening it around her chest.

“Up and down, topsy turvy. A healthy mix of plaudits and pitchforks. That Beck chap is a windbag if I ever saw one, but he’s got a decent team. I know you’re not hot on the holo business right now, but they’ve got a good lead on a couple what-ifs. I pilfered some protos for closer review. You can have a look if you’d like.”

“Not tonight,” she said. She didn’t sport the mindset to endure one of Tony’s nerd sermons right now.

“Long day, huh? They run you out of steam?”

“You could say that, yes.” 

She wasn’t necessarily tired; well, not more than she was on any other given day. She was exhausted in a completely new way, feeling like she had to be continually on the lookout, that if she let her guard down for even just a second, some unspeakable horrendous doom would befall her. And not just her. Tony too. And the company. The thousands and thousands of lives tethered to Stark Industries’ fate.

And now Bruce had come, weak-kneed, pudgy Bruce Banner, who had put another rock on top of the load she was already carrying.

“Anything special?” Tony asked absently. He was untying his tie in front of the mirror.

She made a decision then, and she didn’t allow herself to question its rightfulness. Until she knew more — until she knew for certain (or as close to certain as she could be) if there was a grain of truth to Bruce’s allegations or not — she would keep what he had told her to herself. She seized the pretext that it was for Tony’s sake. It was supposed to make the lie less bad, to take away some of the sour taste of the next words leaving her lips:

“No,” she said simply. “Nothing but the usual.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because secrets are totally healthy, right? 
> 
> Hope you're all keeping well out there.


	17. Chapter 17

It wasn’t that he’d hit a dead end. It was more like tripping down a hole with slick walls, nowhere to grab hold or slow down the fall. And with each try, he would gain velocity, fall faster and faster. There seemed to be no bottom to the hole, at least none he could see.

The only thing that had changed was that he was now sharing the ride with another passenger, one he’d dragged into the mess with promises of heroes and villains and goodly American conduct.

Unfortunately, even Sam’s help wasn’t getting them anywhere but muddy waters. There wasn’t a lot of hard evidence to be dug out of the DC public library and SHIELD wasn’t out to hire paraplegic vets for high-security positions every hour of the day. Sam’s greatest asset was that he was keeping Steve from derailing into this conspiracy theory or that.

They’d meet in the Constitution Gardens where Steve would run along the Potomac or around the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument and Sam would sit on a bench and time his laps. That was for the bystanders and onlookers. Another Help The Disabled charity. They’d done it enough times, no intrigue intermezzos, that Steve thought even SHIELD might buy it. He didn’t know who they had keeping an eye on him, but he was of the settled conviction that there was bound to be _someone._ For what it was worth, Sam agreed.

So after they had parted ways one sweltering summer evening (”Hotter than a sauna and you still bust PRs, man” Sam had said) Steve climbed the five floors to his DC rental. He’d moved downstate. Not permanently — he’d always be a Brooklyn boy — but most of the files he wanted to look at were located at SHIELD’s Triskelion facility and Fury had a no-shipping regulation on them or something. The ‘or something’ being coming up with new and different, yet admittedly quite ingenious ways to put a wrench in Steve’s works whenever he could.

The flat on Connecticut Ave wasn’t special. It was a two-room, no-hassle apartment in a good part of town, at least by his standards.

Apparently not good enough though.

He saw it all the way from across the hall, something that might seem ordinary to other people; a triviality. Only Steve knew better. It ran through him like a jolt of electricity, the sudden certainty that he’d been found out, that he was going to walk through that door right into the muzzle of a sawed-off, the kind that Brock Rumlow liked to pick out of the STRIKE storage down in the weapons bunker.

The doormat was slanted to one side. Nothing to fret about, as his ma used to say, but the thing was, that doormat had no reason to be anything but crisp center. He checked it every morning upon leaving, and he was at the very end of the hall, with no adjoining neighbor’s doors. The only other people on his floor were an old man who was just waiting for Death to ring the bell and a girl in her late twenties who was so shy she’d only ever exchanged three timid hellos with Steve when they happened to occupy the hallway at the same time. Neither of them had any reason to walk all the way up to Steve’s door and trample the hell out of his doormat.

Someone had worked the lock too. He only saw that once he stood right in front of it, but close-up it was indisputable. There were tiny scratch marks around the keyhole. Lock picks.

There were two ways to this. Either he’d bite the bullet and seek out direct confrontation or beat retreat, find a hide-out spot and wait for whoever was in there to come out. If there was someone at all. It could have been recon, or they’d planted bugs or went through his carefully curated photo albums of sepia photographs cobbled together from still living acquaintances of his youth.

Bracing himself, he fished the key ring from his pocket. There were assorted keys on it, big ones, small ones, new ones, old ones. He had no idea what half of them were for — they just tend to accumulate, don’t they? — but under the circumstance, he was glad for each and every one of them. He picked the apartment one off the ring. The rest he laid out in his palm and formed a fist so the pointy end of a key stuck out between his fingers. It was a rudimentary knuckle buster but in no way inferior to the original. In other words, it would get the job done.

He entered. The small corridor representing the anteroom was empty. He inspected the floor critically; clean. If someone was or had been here, they’d taken care to brush the dirt off their shoes first. _On your doormat, no less._

A quick glance into the kitchen, which was the first door to the left, showed an immaculate countertop. Even the daily paper was as he’d left it this morning, open on page 4. Economy. The headline read _Stark Industries (SIA) Drops Deeper Than The Grand Canyon._

“Better drop those nukks before you hurt yaself, lad.”

The guy was standing in the living room, leaning against the door jamb. Steve noted three things instantly. (a) he wasn’t armed, (b) he was underestimating Captain America by a large margin, and (c) he likely meant no danger. Although a stun gun was clipped to his belt (it looked like a police-grade X26) he had to know that neither would it as much as tickle Steve nor would he have the time to draw it if Steve really put his mind to it to go full offense.

He lowered his fist. He didn’t let go of the keys, though.

“Breaking into someone’s home is a federal offense, sir,” he said, although he suspected this entire visit was way off what the law did or didn’t say.

He eyed the guy up. Simple suit, broadly built. If he were to guess, either bar bouncer or big-tip boxer back in his prime, whereas prime was the catchword. The glory days in the ring, if there had been any, were long since over. This wannabe burglar had been getting on in years and up in pounds since his last gong of the bell.

“Who are you?” Steve asked. He tried peering around the corner to get a better idea of the living room, but from his vantage point all he saw was the door jamb and the guy blocking it. “Who sent you? And what do you want?”

“That’s a lot of questions. How about you put down the nukks like I told ya to? You’re making a real bad impression as a host, I’ll let you know. Is that how you treat all your guests?”

There was movement from the living room. Steve gripped his keys tighter. He didn’t know what to expect, but he told himself he was prepared for anything. Our duty is to be ready. That was what Colonel Phillips used to holler into his bullhorn at four-thirty every morning at Camp Lehigh. Be ready or be dead. Crawling under German chain-link in the Normandy, mantras like that made the ultimate difference between life and death.

Unfortunately, mantras like that didn’t prepare Steve for his second unannounced guest.

Pepper Potts stepped into view, and for all the times Steve had stood to attention during his military career, he couldn’t seem to remember a happenstance where he’d stood straighter.

“It’s alright, Happy. Thank you,” Pepper Potts said. The burly man relaxed slightly — but only just.

“Ms Potts,” Steve managed. Again he craned his neck to look past the corner.

“He’s not here, in case you were wondering,” Pepper said levelly.

She didn’t have to clarify whom she meant by ‘he’. They both knew.

Pepper cleared her throat. Steve interpreted it as a cue to get moving. He took a step towards the living room, but the burly man quickly raised his hand.

“Nah, I don’t think so, lad. That’s far enough with those keys juttin’ outta your hand like a prison shiv. Gent like you wouldn’t hurt a lady, would you?”

“Of course not,” Steve said, pocketed the keys and arrived at the conclusion that this scene had just passed every boundary of right and real. When things reached a certain degree of surrealism, he was discovering, they could no longer be turned around.

“I suppose it’s best if we all sat down,” Pepper proposed, and so they did. Once they had, she fished a small rectangular device from her pocket, about the size of a playing card. A green light blinked devotedly on one side.

“It’s a disrupter. One of Tony’s. Nobody will listen in on this conversation as long as it’s on.”

Steve looked at it doubtfully. “And what conversation exactly is that, ma’am?”

“One which has never taken place,” the guard cut in gruffly.

Pepper’s hands disappeared into her purse once again. What she extracted next was a folded piece of newspaper excerpt.

“I’ve talked to Bruce, Steve. About last year. About Russia.”

The air caught in his throat like a stone. “You…?”

“Talked. To Bruce, yes. And now I know… things. Many of which I wish I didn’t. Far more that I don’t quite know what to make of.”

The question was out of his mouth before he’d properly thought it through. “And Tony? Does he know too?”

And if he did, _what_ did he know? What exactly had Bruce spilled to him? Strangely, the first thought on his mind wasn’t Bucky or Hydra or even the implications all of it held for the modern world. It was that night in the 4x4, a week or so out of Moscow. It was the night they’d talked about Howard Stark.

“Tony has other obligations necessitating his attention right now,” Pepper said. And then, as if in afterthought, as if it could drive the nail home, “But he knows. Some of it, anyway. Which is why I’m here. I was hoping you could fill some blanks for us.”

She unfolded the newspaper clipping and handed it to Steve. It wasn’t an original, but rather a xeroxed copy of one article. Before his eyes locked irreversibly on the headline, he forced himself to look higher up: at the date.

_December 17th, 1991_

Bolded beneath it was the title, striking and unmissable and stretched across half the page.

_HOWARD AND MARIA STARK DIE IN CAR ACCIDENT_ _  
_ _Nation mourns passing of husband and wife._

Pepper leaned forward slightly and looked at him. There was nothing demanding about that look. It was made up thoroughly of desperation.

“Tell me that’s all you know, Steve. That there’s nothing more behind it. Tell me that I can go home without a lie on my lips.”

He looked at the picture and then he looked at Pepper. He tried to smile. Give her something. Give her reassurance. But whatever it was he was trying, it wouldn’t come.

He found he could not even stretch his lips convincingly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pepper Potts doesn't mess around.


	18. Chapter 18

Quentin Beck hadn’t been offered the lead position of Stark Industries’ research and development department on good looks alone. He might have been a self aggrandising prick but he wasn’t stupid. This was not an observation Tony would ever share — not with others and certainly not with Quentin himself — but it was true nonetheless.

What Quentin Beck lacked though, and what no amount of smarts could make up for, was vision. Using holographic projectors to fancy up rides at Disneyland or fill the clearance aisles at Walmart with 4D photo frames might be profitable in terms of revenue, short-term anyway, but it did nothing to pave the way forward for the company or the technology sector, or mankind as a whole.

‘Leave mediocrity to those who’ll settle for it’ had been one of his old man’s mantras and in that at least, Tony agreed with him. He wouldn’t be where he was right now if Howard Stark had settled for second-rate during the Manhattan project, or if Tony himself hadn’t put a cap on daddy’s gunbox after Afghanistan.

So Disneyland would have to wait and so would the board; Tony had put a temporary stop to the whole holo brigade. Officially, for in-depth review. That was to say, he’d gotten away with it easily. The worker bees hadn’t become suspicious at all. Only Beck had, and even for him suspicion had been matched in equal amount by fear. Fear to speak up, fear to get booted, but most of all fear to be right — and to not be able to do anything against Tony taking his toys because it just so suited him.

Because that was exactly what he’d done. He hadn’t thought of great sales opportunities at all when he’d laid eyes upon Beck’s little project, and as of right now he had no intention whatsoever to pitch any of this to the board. Maybe once things were over. But not now.

Bruce Banner hadn’t turned out to be the help Tony needed to put the finishing touches on BARF. Bruce was wrapped up in Soviet fairy tales and the idée fixe that Hitler was on the rise again. 

That was all well and good, and if Bruce had said aliens instead of Nazis, Tony would have given it more thought. Aliens, after all, were something he’d stopped being casual about in May 2012. If the Chit or any of their distant relatives were in the talks for a homecoming, hell, Tony would have cocked his ears like antennas. But he couldn't get himself worked up over Bruce's online rumour mill or the fear that some sketchy Third Reich fanboys wanted to party like it was 1939. 

Now BARF on the other hand, BARF was something that drew all of Tony’s attention. BARF held the secret to the past and, conversely, to the future. Although by all physical laws both JARVIS and his little bastard brother should be null and void, he kept stumbling over trace signals pointing to the contrary. Hamlet couldn’t have said it better: Something was rotten in the State of Sokovia. And Tony was damned if he didn’t find out what.

He’d accounted for such an eventuality, a merge between J and… more. But he’d only done so in theory and his theory at that time had been tainted, in not negligible amounts, by the adverse reactions of Chitauri crack. He remembered little, and what he could recall made no sense. BARF was supposed to open up this avenue, shine a little light on dusty corners. And it did that, very well even. But the moment the sim was over and he puked his guts out into the little trash can which had become a staple of the setup, the memory, fleeting as it had been, was gone again.

It wasn’t enough to revisit. What he needed to do was to record in order to later reevaluate.

He’d thought at first Bruce (or any helper, really) would be able to fill this requirement. But Bruce had no way of looking into Tony’s brain the way BARF allowed him too. He had not invented any means to visualize the trip for outsiders.

Luckily, Quentin Beck had taken care of that, little worker bee that he was, and all without knowing it he’d held the missing piece to Tony’s puzzle the entire time.

Wasn’t it generally intelligible then that Tony had to requisition the project for the greater good? If he could crack his own hippocampus with the aid of BARF and Beck’s holo projector, then… then all would be good. It would mean J’s return, and with J back to guide him and help him, nothing would stand in their way.

In his and J’s way.

In his and Pep’s way.

* * *

But something was standing in his and Pep’s way.

He couldn’t put a finger on it, but it was there, lodged between them like food caught between teeth. She was snappish without reason (he knew because he gave her plenty of those to keep her in good supply), she worked longer hours (thank God there were only twenty-four in one day!) and when she was at home she was either packing or unpacking for trips around the country or across the globe.

Even Tony, who’d dedicated himself to the task of snapping every bra in the Western world for most of his life prior to settling down with Pepper — rather than honing his skills at understanding the finer aspects of relationship chemistry — could see that the ball had somehow ended up in his corner. That she was, with mounting impatience, waiting for him to make a move.

Which was easier said than done. He had no idea what he had done wrong, which made the act of atoning for it that much harder. He went through his habitual repertoire first. He was charming. He was saying yes in all the right places and no when she expected to hear it. As a rule this behavior, practised meticulously over a duration of two or three weeks, was enough to calm whatever storm was brewing and Pepper would seamlessly revert from bitch to beauty before heads (his) could roll.

This time around he had no such luck.

She was evasive, their sex-life had hit a dry spell and he was getting increasingly frustrated about running into an invisible wall. Hadn’t it been her always preaching to communicate one’s problems? She’d been lecturing him all about it for years only to go against her own teachings now. How was your day? Meh. Is there anything on your mind? No. Will you blow me, or do I have to jack off under the shower again?

No, rewind. That last one was nasty, even though he couldn’t help but think it at times. Maybe it was better to let whatever had befallen Pep come to a natural conclusion. And barring that, he’d have to get used to the idea that this exceptional situation might end up being semi-permanent. She was in her mid-forties. A little early, but what were the odds that she had taken a surprise header into the murky waters of menopause?

The only thing that seemed to help keeping his sanity intact was redirecting his efforts into BARF. He’d gotten as far as wiring up the projector to the headset and jury-rigging it all to the back of a recorder. The emerging feed was comparable to The Blair Witch Project suffering from Parkinson’s, but it was a start.

And it would have been a downright quantum leap if not for daddy dearest throwing a wrench in the works.

Remember the trauma olympics? Tony still held gold. Unrivaled.

* * *

On the up side, it didn’t seem to be about him personally.

That, at first, had been the only conclusion he was able to wrap his head around when Pepper had sat him down for The Talk. He’d waited in a kind of horrified suspension for something irrevocable to spill out of her. He hadn’t felt this level of foreboding in a long time. The tension was as thick as the fog on the San Francisco bay. He was almost ready to blow all dignity out of the room — the urge overcame him as she initiated the dooming “Tony, I think we have to talk” — and drop to his knees like a heart-attack victim and beg her to stay.

He hadn’t realized before, or at least never openly admitted to himself, how utterly terrified he was at the idea that she might leave him. There was a direct and unquestionable connection to space, to the deplorable notion of infinite loneliness and the live entombment within the suit.

She must have seen the color drain his face. Maybe she cut the suspense short because of that, or maybe he was closer to the heart attack than he’d inappropriately assessed himself before.

Her hands moved to cover his. She inched her body somewhat closer. The distance between them still felt enormous.

“Tony, please. Relax. It’s not—” She paused. The pause was goddamn scary. It wasn’t what? “It’s not whatever you’re thinking it is.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but he was unable to form even a simple syllable. Pepper had moved to the outside of his vision, or his vision had reduced to tunnel view. Either way, it didn’t matter. His throat had corded up. A light tremor settled into his extremities, growing in intensity. He smelled what not even BARF could yet reproduce: the murky, dead air of the suit, the taste of bile and dried vomit in the back of his throat, the inability to control his body after months and months of enforced inactivity.

He made a strangled sound, just briefly and unconsciously — and then it was over. Pepper was staring at him with big, worried eyes. A dull throb emanated from the backside of his right hand. Looking down, he realized she had pinched him, and not softly.

“Wow,” he said, out of breath.

“You haven’t had one of those in a while,” Pepper constituted. “At least none that bad. Are you okay?”

The velocity and suddenness of anxiety attacks was something he would never get used to. He disentangled his hands from hers and ruffled his hair. His face was coated in a thin layer of sweat.

“I’m okay. That was intense. Wow. If you plan to ditch me, can you please not do it now? Or at least call 9-1-1 before you drop the bomb. It’ll be either a stroke or a coronary.”

“That’s not funny, Tony,” Pepper said, and of course she was right. It wasn’t funny… but at least by means of exclusion he’d now determined that a break-up was not what had been on her mind. That, or she didn’t want to explain to the cops why he’d suddenly kicked the can on the sofa.

He rubbed the spot where she had pinched him. An angry red halo had formed around it, but he thought it was unlikely to bruise.

“What was it that you wanted to talk about?”

Her lips formed a doubtful line. “Maybe now isn’t the time.”

“No, it’s perfect. I’ve got it all out of my system. Let’s use the time until the panic reserves recharge. Unless you’re leaving or the company’s filing for insolvency, I can take it.”

“It’s neither,” Pepper said, but the worried expression on her face didn’t budge.

He made the inevitable connection almost instantaneously.

“Is it Steve? What’s that crapbag done now?”

A distorted laugh escaped from Pepper’s lips. Not Steve, then. Tony relaxed a little. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad. His top three were already off the list.

“What is it then?”

Pepper took his hands again. This time her touch felt grounding, as it was intended to.

“It’s about your parents.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah shit, this conversation is going to go well.
> 
> Hope you're all doing better than Tony.
> 
> As always, we'd love to hear from you guys. Have you been making sourdough starters? Taken up lockdown arts and crafts? Read any good fanfics lately? Drop us a shout.


	19. Chapter 19

Bruce gnawed on his lower lip and tried again for the fourth time, but it was no use. His access to the Malibu residence had been unequivocally revoked.

Unfortunately, showing up and assisting Tony in whatever he needed assisting was Bruce’s job. Clocking in and out on Stark Industries’ payroll was one of the shadowy conditions of his parole, which was his only reason for currently not sporting this season’s latest ankle monitor.

Consequently, he really, really needed to not be fired.

“JARVIS, can you-” he began before stopping himself. It was still so difficult to imagine Tony without the AI that had been such a pervasive part of his life that even now he reflexly found himself talking to the thin air that had once been the eyes and ears of this house.

He called Tony’s cell instead. It rang twice before going to voicemail.

Pepper had received the news about Tony’s parents with a frosty reception to say the least. She obviously wasn’t grateful for the problem being dumped in her lap. He wondered if she had opted to tell Tony, and if that was why Tony had now made Bruce persona non grata in his personal workspace.

She probably had, which was why he tried her direct line next. That also went straight to voicemail, but this time Bruce didn’t hang up. His message started out fairly casual but quickly reverted to the obvious overtures of someone desperately seeking reassurance, insecurity straining the edges of his voice.

“So, uh, just to clarify… is this temporary? What should I be doing? Can you call me back?”

It felt wrong to hang about Tony’s house, especially knowing that he was probably downstairs, studiously ignoring Bruce’s presence. The weird thrill he’d experienced touring the mansion the last time around was decidedly absent today. He felt like the fifth wheel on a wagon, an outsider in whatever was between Tony and Pepper.

He also felt like an idiot standing on the doorstep of their house and not being let in. What was the guard down in his little traffic hut thinking, looking at the tapes that were undoubtedly spanning the entirety of the estate? 

He buttoned up his jacket and slunk down the driveway, waving shamefully as he passed the guard chalet. The guard didn’t bother to wave back. He only pressed a button and the red and white traffic barrier lifted in front of Bruce.

He passed hurriedly underneath and walked to the edge of the perimeter where he called for a cab. The graffiti tainting the wall-fence was getting cruder and less inventive, the stone thick with the whitewash emulsion that Tony’s staff were using to cover it up on a daily basis. He wondered what that must be like, to wake up every morning and get paid to show up to someone’s house and paint over the words _TONY STARK SUCKS DICK_ or similar.

Hopefully the money was good, at least.

He went back to the apartment, checking his phone every five minutes for a reaction that wouldn’t come. He watched back to back episodes of University Challenge. Then he vacantly ate an entire pint of ice cream. This was followed by an episode of dispiritedness, because mindlessly gobbling a pint of ice-cream was not in keeping with any of the resolutions he’d made about getting back in shape or going for a hike or hitting the gym or all the things he’d promised himself he’d do if he were ever released from house arrest. Even with his freedom he was still determined to run his self-esteem into the ground.

It was late afternoon before his phone finally rang.

“Yes, it’s temporary,” Pepper said by way of hello. He could hear the sound of a car door slamming, the noise of a busy street abruptly muffled.

“So what should I…”

He could practically hear her jaw clamp shut on the other end of the phone, the tiny little exhale of breath from her nostrils at yet another thing she had to micro-manage.

“Just enjoy the break,” she said, trying to sound light but coming across forced. “God knows, we could all do with one.”

He looked down at the empty ice cream carton, the little milky pool collecting at the bottom of the tub. This didn’t feel like vacation. It felt like balancing on a tightly stretched rope, with the rope hanging over a pit full of starving lions. Nothing about it was enjoyable.

“How long do you think—?”

“Hang on a sec. I’ve got another call.”

“No, I’ll let you go,” Bruce said hastily. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Yes, of course.” She sounded distracted, eager to get off the line. So he was surprised when she followed up with a hasty addendum. “Actually, you can meet me for dinner. I’ll text you a place.”

Then she hung up.

The message came two hours later. He had held onto the phone for the entire time. He was equal parts mortified and anxious and, maybe, just a tiny bit excited.

* * *

He wasn’t entirely out of place, in the sense that men were largely wearing shirts and slacks and he was also wearing some approximation thereof. He’d tied his belt tightly and tried to suck in his gut, but he still felt completely underdressed and out out of character in the establishment that Pepper had chosen.

Being a vegetarian, he wasn’t a fan of steakhouses to begin with and he certainly wasn’t a fan of steakhouses where the cheapest appetizer on the menu was forty dollars. The worst part was that he still got the impression that Pepper was somehow slumming it for his benefit, that this was her idea of a casual, low-end venue.

The restaurant had private booths and he was led to the one already occupied by her. He supposed that when you were the CEO of the currently most hated corporation in America, you didn’t want Joe Public snapping pictures of you on their cellphone in an Olive Garden. Especially when it wasn’t your long-term boyfriend sitting opposite of you, or in his absence an adequate business substitute. 

What would the press write if they caught Pepper Potts at a table for two with a stranger? Sure, the media knew who he was (at least he’d been nominally mentioned in an article about Tony’s prosthetic arm last year) but that wouldn’t stop the gossip mills from turning. He couldn’t help but imagine Tony reading the article during his morning coffee, the lead story in something like People or Entertainment Weekly. _POTTS CAUGHT CHEATING._ What would Tony’s reaction be? 

Bruce buried his head in the menu. This wasn’t some kind of secret date. Tony’s girlfriend wasn’t doing one over on him, she was rightfully concerned for him, and Bruce was nothing more than a means to an end.

There was no small talk, which was excruciatingly awkward. He wanted to say something, _anything_ to break the silence, but leading up with ‘So how did Tony take to the news that his parents were murdered?’ just didn’t seem to be a clever conversation starter.

Finally, the waiter came to take their orders and bring their drinks. Water, both, hers sparkling.

“Don’t feel obliged to be teetotal on my account,” he said.

“I was about to say the same,“ she countered.

So neither of them were in the mood for drinking. Prolonged exposure to Tony had that effect, he supposed.

“I did try to tell him,” Bruce began with his explanation-come-apology. He was unable to keep himself silent any longer. “I really did, but he laughed at me before I could even get to what I wanted to say.”

“It was better coming from me,” she said.

“How did he take it?”

“Not well, but not too badly either.” She shook her head. “Look, I’m not here to gossip about Tony’s reaction.”

“You want a plan going forward.”

“Yes. I want to know more about this man, this Winter Soldier. About what danger he poses. And how he can be stopped.”

Bruce laughed. Wasn’t this what everybody, himself included, wanted to know? It was the million-dollar question, without one definite answer.

“Tony was barely tolerating me before this news. He’s hardly going to come around after the bombshell, don’t you think?”

“He’ll come around,” Pepper said, and he got the impression that she said it with a conviction that held little regard to what Tony would or wouldn’t do on his own account. “You were trying to help. You could have just kept it to yourself and you didn’t.”

“But I should have. You’d both have been better off not knowing.”

“If I started tallying up the things that we’d both have been better off for, I don’t think I’d be able to stop.”

Bruce said nothing, because she didn’t need to know that every night of his life was spent making his own mental list of just that, starting with his accident and working his way through every chronological screw-up in the same way most people counted sheep to fall asleep.

“I just hope he won’t shoot the messenger,” he said.

“If you’re worried about your employment status, parole, that sort of thing...” Pepper began, her mouth hardening a little.

“I meant you,” Bruce cut in, and that silenced her. He felt… oddly empowered. It wasn’t an all-out negative feeling. He wondered if that was what influential men like Tony felt. Authoritative. Dominant. But the feeling quickly dissipated and he reverted back to more familiar territory. “I meant that I hope he wasn’t giving you a hard time.”

It was hard not to think about the island, about the livid bruises that had encircled Pepper’s wrist and the way all three of them had just wordlessly agreed to never mention the incident again the second they’d set foot back on mainland. Tony had never struck him as an abusive character, but it was hard to judge character on someone who’d been through what Tony had been through. It wasn’t an excuse, of course, more like a massive caveat. People suffering from PTSD, especially on the scale that Tony was, were unpredictable. And seldomly in a good way.

He watched Pepper touch her forearm and he wondered if she was thinking about the same thing.

“He’s stable,” she said defensively, which was just another textbook sign that Bruce didn’t bother to point out.

“Okay,” he said and then the waiter brought them their food.

He cleaned his own plate with relish.

She barely touched hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy a mini break to the land of Bruce's inner insecurities.


	20. Chapter 20

Tony had never been a daddy’s boy. Despite what he’d told his mother on that August day back in 1980 when the limousine had pulled up in front of the mansion — that he was going to miss home, that he didn’t want to go — they had both known he didn’t mean it.

Getting out and away from under Howard’s thumb had been one of the best decisions ever taken in Tony’s favor. His mother had known it and, decades later, Tony was seeing it for what it had really been: not an excuse to push him aside like a plate of food that you didn’t want, but an opportunity to grow beyond the shadow his father had cast upon him, consciously or unconsciously.

Mostly the former. Howard Stark had been a brilliant man. But he’d never been good dad material.

Tony had advanced towards adulthood in a manner known typical for kids of his kind (brainy, filthy rich, enormous shoes to fill): excelling at everything he was doing, earning nothing but the highest praises from tutors and critics, yet hopelessly seeking recognition from the only place there was none to obtain.

The depressive episodes had come first, with the drugs quick to follow. In terms of instant validation, there was little beating a nose-full of coke. Crashes were a lot less fun. They put Howard in the right. And Howard had never missed a chance to express his opinion, to force it on Tony like strapping a saddle on a wild bronc. Howard had called it education. Tony had called it a lot of other names over the years, few of them constructive.

But this wasn’t where he was trying to get with this little soliloquy. Howard was long dead, withering away in the family crypt with a thick, heavy marble slab sealing his casket.

And _that_ was where this memoir was supposed to lead to. Tony had never mourned his father’s passing beyond the minimal effective dose: the inescapable coming-to-terms that, for the first time in his life, he was truly alone, the fact that a global megacorp was now his, and the realization that every person on planet Earth from that day onward would look at Tony Stark and ask themselves only one question: would he live up to his father’s legacy?

Who he missed was his mother. That longing would never truly leave him, not even thirty years later. He wouldn’t think of her constantly — he wasn’t _disturbed —_ in fact, he would go months without wasting a thought on her. There was the mandatory blues every year on December 16, yes, and sometimes he’d spin what-ifs when he’d overhear Pepper talk to her own mother on the phone, but he’d mostly come to terms with the idea that she was gone. That Howard, that greasy-haired, crotch-grabbing, poor excuse for a father, had claimed her life because he’d been too drunk to keep his car on a straight no-obstacles country road.

It was okay to hate the memory of his father unreservedly. He had a great many reasons, most strikingly the blame for his mother’s death. And let’s be honest, all that blame was well-placed. Howard had put his shoulder to the wheel to earn it.

But now?

Learning that that drunkard hadn’t even been guilty of murdering himself and his poor, undeserving wife? That he hadn’t purposely driven his Daimler straight into a lamp post as just another stab at ridiculing and demeaning his one and only son?

That he’d been—

Oh, Jesus. Even _thinking_ it upset Tony’s stomach, and not at all in an assuaging weight-off-the-chest way.

Howard had been _innocent_.

There. He’d said it — thought it at least.

And it was entirely unpalatable.

Howard didn’t deserve to come out hands clean in all of this, even worse, a victim of questionable Eastern European espionage conspiracies.

On his way down into the garage Tony lingered for just a moment on the stairs leading to the second sublevel. It wasn’t long. He was barely aware he did it — his mind was in a thousand places but the one he kept his father’s old bottle of whiskey in — but he hesitated anyway.

And anyone who’s ever been plagued by this particular sin will tell you: a moment of hesitation is one moment too long.

* * *

If there was one place which lent itself to mull over pioneering inventions and unchangeable acts of universal injustice, then for Tony it was the reupholstered calf leather seat of his 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster. Between the years 2008 and 2012 he might have counted the inside of the Iron Man armor as an acceptable substitute — tranquil flights over the Pacific coastline, sunsets in untouched corners of the Grand Canyon, thrill rides at Mach 6 that would have put any AirForce pilot to shame — but he was now living in 2018 and the mere thought of stepping inside a suit made his skin crawl like he’d fallen into a pit full of fire ants. Iron Man was a hard no.

That left the roadster. The roadster brought with it its own share of memories, most good, some not so. It had belonged to daddy after all. And although Tony had scrubbed it clean and scrapped it out of all things Howard, he would never be able to let go of his father’s influence completely.

He wiped at a smudge on the dashboard, annoyed for having missed it on his last clean. The pad of his thumb caught on it. Persistent little sonofabitch. He frowned, leaping a heartbeat. It wasn’t a smudge. It was a tiny chip.

Irritation swept over him, neatly focused on one point; one person.

Pepper.

Pepper, who’d put the damn car into storage and left it to the mercy of a lack of climate control, Pepper who was to blame that the dashboard was slowly shattering into spidery shards, Pepper who’d taken the one certainty from his life and annexed it with a question mark.

Daddy had killed mommy.

But had daddy really killed mommy?

He’d thought about it, of course, and so had half the major newsprints of America back in its time. HOWARD STARK ASSASSINATED? The one headline plastered across every newsstand for weeks on end. The FBI and the Pentagon and the local cops had all conducted their own investigations on the matter, and for what it was worth Obadiah Stane had mandated an in-house probing to make sure that opinions of certain lawful officers hadn’t been bought with blank checks. Even knowing what would happen between them decades later, Tony didn’t think that Obie’s duplicity had reached that far back. Theirs - his and Howard’s - had been a genuine friendship. They’d been loyal to one another.

Not that it mattered now. The thing that bugged him wasn’t the accident or murder or call it whatever-you-want — it was the fact that he’d come to terms with the cause of his mother’s death and Howard had presented himself, all open-armed and snake smile, to accept the entire blame on it.

And Tony just didn’t want to shift it, not even part of it, onto some serendipitous bystander, never mind the whole assassination subplot.

Plus, there was now a chip in the roadster’s dashboard. That annoyed him almost as much as the incertitude Pepper (and Bruce, goddamn him!) had forced on him.

He wished he could take the Flathead out for a drive, work up that engine, work off his temper. But it was coming down in buckets outside and the last thing he needed was rust damage on top of the popped dash, the car crumbling to pieces in front of his very eyes, the way his molars had done by the occasion of his first anniversary, Chit-style.

Then it hit him.

He _could_ go for a ride.

He could go for a ride without leaving the house at all.

* * *

It was just what he’d needed. The sun in his face, the wind in his hair, the rev counter holding steady just over 30.

He leaned forward, turned on the radio and tuned it until he found something loud and nasty by Guns ‘n Roses. Welcome to the jungle, baby, we’ve got fun and games.

“Oh my, you’re in a mood,” came the commentary from the passenger side, and he glanced over to see Pep sit there, all long legs and short skirt and wavy blonde hair. Whatever ire he’d felt towards her before was gone. She was with him on this ride, committed and trusting and unconditionally his. The way she was supposed to be.

“Nothing that some rubber on asphalt won’t fix,” he said. “Kick up the breeze a bit, you know. Blow out the filters.” He patted the dashboard, which was immaculate. “The old lady needs her exercise or she’ll get cranky.”

Pepper giggled softly. “Sounds like someone I know.”

She shifted, putting her hand on his knee, letting it temptingly trail north. She reached out and up, doing it slowly. He liked when she did it like that. He relaxed a little, enjoying the warmth of her touch. Maybe she’d give him head while driving. That would blow out his filters for sure. 

“Slow down, Anthony.”

Startled, he looked down at the manicured hand resting firmly, and entirely devoid of sexual innuendo, on his knee. A fat Harry Winston sat on the slender fourth finger, the same one that was tucked into the back of a safe in his parents’ room in a Manhattan townhouse. It blinded him temporarily, the way he remembered it casting rainbow prisms on the textured cream Chinese wallpaper in the sunroom.

When he looked back up again, the Flathead had turned into a Daimler Double-Six that smelled of cigars and diesel. Pepper was gone. His mother had taken her place, with her pearl necklace and the blase blue blazer imbued with her trademark perfume. Something by Revlon, long since out of production.

He did as he was told. The needle dropped below 50. It was probably for the best, anyway. The sun was disappearing behind a wall of clouds and the Daimler’s brakes were worn bad. He’d checked them himself once he’d gotten his hands on the wreck. For all the money he owned, Howard had been a cheapskate in all the wrong places. He should have never driven a car with brakes like that.

“Where are we going?” he asked. He had a stinking suspicion, which he hoped dearly his mother would refute.

_And don’t say Into The Ditch, mom, because I won’t let that happen on my watch._

“You were driving me to the Pentagon. To collect your father, remember? You offered to bring us to the airfield.”

“Right,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

He wished he had offered, back in ‘91. He’d lived for years with the conviction that, if he had driven — sober Tony instead of shitfaced Howard — it wouldn’t have mattered whether the Daimler had good brakes or bad ones. He wouldn’t have swerved off the road, either way.

For a while he just drove. He knew the road like the back of his hand. He’d driven it up and down and down and up countless times, all hours of the day, all weather conditions, sober _and_ drunk. Still, he’d never understood what had prompted his father to yank at the steering wheel in the middle of a straight batch of empty road and hit that single lonesome lamp post like he’d aimed for bullseye. An off-course stray? A trick of the lights? 

“It’ll come up soon,” his mother assured him, as though she’d just read his mind. “It’ll come up soon and then you’ll understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” someone said from the back. “Just keep your eyes on the road, son.”

Tony’s hands squeezed the wheel. His eyes jutted to the rearview. Howard Stark sat in the back, a smug smile on his lips and the clear, perceptive eyes of a man who wasn’t even close to his alcoholic edge.

Tony took a deep breath, held it. This was his opening, maybe the only one he was ever going to get. He could cut his father down to size, say his piece, get that closure that had never come. God hates a coward, wasn’t that what Howard had always preached? Speak your mind or choke on it.

He gripped the wheel even tighter. The leather squeaked under his grip. His gaze shifted continuously between the windscreen and the rearview. The needle on the speedometer was climbing again.

“Slow down,” his mother said, but he didn’t. The road was straight as a rule. What could happen?

The worst, of course. And the worst wasn’t daddy taunting him from the backseat like a picador would a bull. It was Howard’s new seatmate. Sprung from thin air was Captain Fucking America, leaning against the Daimler’s upholstery like he owned it. He was dressed in full regalia, and Tony’s mind was going over and above to keep everything period-appropriate; Cap’s outfit was authentically vintage.

“It’ll be on you this time,” Steve cautioned in his stupid, sermonizing way.

Tony was tempted to hit the brakes full-on. Let that vainglorious SOB take a bite out of the upholstery. Who did he think he was to intrude on such a painfully private head trip? 

He watched the needle climb to 80, past 85, reaching and passing 90. Hell if he was letting this asshole get one over on him.

“I knew it, knew it all along. You’re—”

But Steve never got to finish (and maybe it was better that way), because out of nowhere the street lamp had suddenly appeared, not burrowed in the ground on the left side of the road, but planted straight in the middle of it, right on top of the line marking.

There was no way Tony could have avoided it.

He didn’t even have time to hit the brakes.

* * *

He ripped the goggles off his eyes with the loud breathless gasp of a man who has been kicked in the pit of the stomach.

“Jesus,” he gasped. He leaned back against the cushion of the Flathead. He was trembling all over, too shaken to even be sick. The VR goggles lay in the passenger’s side foot compartment. He bent down after them, more out of automation than the actual urge to examine them for potential damage.

A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Relax, man. I’ll get them for you.”

Tony’s eyes bulged to the size of saucers, watching as his best friend — Lieutenant Colonel James R. Rhodes, dead as of two years plus — bent down nimbly to retrieve the goggles from where they lay.

He handed them to Tony, breaching every etiquette in the book of Good Manners For The Lingering Hallucination.

“There you go. And next time you see your dad, tell him to check the rivets,” Rhodey said. “It’s never the brakes on those old Daimlers, but the rivets coming loose. Take it from someone who knows.”

* * *

(He didn't just linger on the stairs leading down to the winery after.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since we had a look inside Tony's head...


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Touchy subjects ahead. Consider this your warning.

She longed for the old days. Not the ones when Tony had been presumed dead — that was a place in her head on indefinite lockdown — but those farther out. When it had been good between them and there had been no arguments about money and ambitions and the future.

Stark Industries was not going to survive. It might not be evident to the masses yet but she knew, the way one knows a horse has to be put down when you find it lying in the pasture with a broken leg.

Some of the subsidiary companies could maybe stay afloat, the ones that weren’t tainted with Tony’s name. Barstow Electronics, Cordco, Oracle Incorporated. The main body of the corporation, however, was on borrowed time. It was a matter of a year or two at the optimistic most before they’d be forced to start carving it up and sell it to the highest bidder.

She hadn’t broken the news to Tony yet. In fact, she hadn’t even dared to voice her fears out loud to the members of the board. When you were in the big chair, getting the big bucks for making the big decisions, you couldn’t just say the first thing that was on your mind. You had to read the playboard and conduct a meticulous risk-benefit analysis to determine whether unsettling the entire company was worth the potential catastrophe following in the wake of people panicking.

She knew that the right thing to do would be to sit down and have a calm, non-judgmental conversation with Tony about the whole thing. But talking with Tony these days — especially in calm, non-judgmental fashion — wasn’t easy. Maybe he blamed her for the news on his parents. He certainly hadn’t taken kindly to the tidings, and his way of processing the story was beginning to worry her. If she could take back what she’d said in hindsight, she would do it in a flash. She wasn’t one to throw warnings out easily, but the lack of tangible information frustrated her to boiling point.

Steve Rogers had been a dead end in the most radical sense of the word. Not only did he have no idea what she was onto about, but had picked up on the newspaper cue in a way she hadn’t expected at all and much less cared for. Thank God she’d sent Happy out on a smoke break before Captain America, bashful and affable in a way she’d never quite bought into, broke down in front of her with the confession that, at the peak of World War II, he’d enjoyed a friends-with-benefits relationship with Howard Stark, which had been followed up by an annex about how Bruce Banner couldn’t seem to keep his goshdarn mouth shut.

She’d left it at that, in equal parts confused and exasperated, because all the work she’d put into hunting out Steve Rogers had been for naught. She still only had Bruce’s word to go on, and that wasn’t enough.

But then Tony had had his anxiety attack — the worst episode in more than a year — and she just hadn’t been able to keep up face. In that moment, that split second when he had begun to come out of it, she’d allowed herself the easy way out too. She would tell him. She would tell him, and then it would be off her chest and they’d sit down together and have a calm, non-judgmental conversation about it all.

Did that sound like deja-vu? It certainly felt so.

There was no sign of life when she got home. She called a tentative ‘hello’, but wasn’t surprised when it remained unanswered. Light shone from the basement stairs. He was most certainly down there, wrapped up in whatever fantasy world that machine of his was spawning.

She went for the stairs. Deja-vu or not, this one couldn’t be delayed.

As she put her head around the basement entrance, she expected to see Tony up to his elbows in engine grease. Instead he was sat, scowl on his face, scotch in his hand, his browser open at what looked at a glance to be one of those creepy fanart sites depicting some fairly graphic images of Iron Man and Captain America. She couldn't tell from the angle where his other hand was, but he was breathing heavily.

She ducked straight back out, ice in her chest and an entirely unwarranted feeling of guilt in her stomach, like she was the one who'd been caught doing something wrong. The very idea made her want to charge in there and confront him, but if there was any sure-fire shortcut to closing down all avenues of communication, it was going in guns blazing.

How did one open up such a conversation, anyway? _So, uh, I see you're jacking off to badly photoshopped BDSM porn of your former teammate-turned-arch-nemesis-turned-apparent-sexual-fantasy? Want to talk about it?_

Carefully, she peeked around the corner of the door once more. He was sitting with his back to her. From his posture she could tell two things: one, he hadn’t heard her. Two, he wasn’t only drunk; he was completely wasted. 

Something clenched up inside of her. Not because of what was on screen. She knew Tony had issues with Steve (bad ones, and apparently they were a lot worse than she’d thought) but what really troubled her was the glass of scotch. She’d been— _they’d_ been working so hard to prevent this, to traipse around the bottomless hole of that atrocious indignity called alcoholism. 

For the first time she felt as though the surface charm had slipped off him. She thought she could see the real person underneath, a person she didn’t like at all, a person that appalled her when she thought of him in connection with herself.

She pulled back, at first only for a lungful of air, but her resolve to confront him faltered the moment she let out the breath she’d been holding.

In the end, she didn’t go in. They didn’t have the level-headed conversation about Stark Industries’ future or his parents or where the two of them stood (and where Steve stood, for what it was worth).

Instead she went back upstairs, made herself a cup of tea and retreated to the bedroom.

Hopefully he would be too drunk to join her.

* * *

She’d been stewing over it all morning. She sat in the kitchen, looking over company spreadsheets on her laptop, jabbing away at the keyboard with a misplaced anger that was almost vicious.

If the old couple’s adage to never go to bed angry was anything to go by, they’d blanked the advice in an exemplary manner. Tony hadn’t come to bed at all, and it was only around 10AM that she began to hear movement from the basement. The forceful clang of a door being pulled open and closed, the unmistakable sound of vomiting (which she listened to with equal parts disgust and satisfaction) and lastly the faucet.

She hoped he had a splitting headache, the kind of hangover where it felt like someone was taking a jackhammer to the inside of his skull.

When he eventually emerged, disheveled and reeking of sick, she was in the middle of deciding what to have for breakfast. She opted, on a whim, for a fruit smoothie. Yes, a smoothie, just so she could turn the blender on and make a god-awful racket. She flicked the switch and ground her back teeth in time with the motion of the whirring blades. By this point, he’d made it into the kitchen.

“Burning the midnight oil?” she asked pointedly.

Either he knew better than to embark on what could only end in a losing battle, or he was still too hungover to care. Instead he pointed at the blender, where a bowl of blueberries had just been aggressively reduced to pulp.

“Are you drinking that?”

It was as if they’d regressed ten years, as if she was his PA again, listening to his transparently garbage excuses. She shook her head tightly, poured the concoction into a glass and shoved it across the counter. He slurped down the liquid like he was dying of thirst. She looked at him, in his jeans and stained t-shirt, the way his face sagged with age in a way she hadn’t noticed before and she thought about how he was even less attractive now than when he’d come back from space, an emaciated one-armed walking corpse. Because at least then, she’d been full of hope.

She wondered if this was what it felt like to fall out of love with somebody.

_Don’t be stupid_ , a voice in her head admonished. _You’re furious, angry and stressed, that's all. And alone. How about opening up THAT tap?_

But could she? Shouldn’t she save it for another day, preferably one when Tony was amenable to an adult conversation? 

_And when will that be?_ the voice asked. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow sounded like a good day. But even as she thought it and appointed it a mental slot, a lump formed in her throat, a scream stuck inside her, stuck somewhere deep and looking for a way out.

“I was pregnant.”

She wasn’t even sure that she’d said it out loud until he looked up with a jerk like whiplash.

She was regretting it already, but the words were tumbling out, falling off the tip of her tongue where they’d been sat for so long.

“I was waiting for the right time to tell you. But then the right time never came.”

It took him a moment to make the connection, to get the cogs to turn. She watched with a strange sort of curiosity how it played out across his expression. 

“You lost it? Jesus, Pepper, I- Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked genuinely crestfallen. So much so that it was tempting to let the lie just linger there. But she couldn’t.

“I didn‘t lose it.” And then, because part of her wanted it to hurt: “I did us both a favor.”

Was that too far? She thought that might have been too far. The voice in the back of her head grew more insistent. She shut her mouth before the rest of her diatribe could start spilling out.

“You got rid of it?” he asked and now his face was white, like flour. 

She wasn't going to make excuses to him. It had been the right thing to do, unequivocally. She had no regrets about her decision. A pregnancy would have been a disaster, a baby even worse. She couldn't imagine having this argument now, with Tony on a crash course towards an alcoholic relapse, only with the added complication of being pregnant with a child she didn't want. Because she knew, without a doubt, that having a baby on the way would ultimately do nothing to modify his behavior. That she’d have still walked downstairs last night to the exact same scene. She wasn't stupid enough to think that having a child fixed anything when it came to relationships.

Did she regret not telling him?

No, that wasn't it either. Maybe she regretted the fact that he was such a mess that telling him hadn't even been a viable option. Maybe she regretted the fact that, in another world and another life, she'd have shown him the positive test and they'd have had a calm, non-judgmental conversation about the fact that being parents just wasn't on the cards for them and it would have been a mutual decision and he'd have come with her to the appointment and he’d have been there with a hot water bottle for the cramps instead of being out of town.

“It was really early days, Tony,” she said, suddenly seized with a fear that he was going to come over all pro-life on her and start mourning his unborn child. “It wasn't a big deal. It wasn’t anything. Just a maybe.”

“It was _our_ maybe,” he shot back. And, a lot more careful, “Did you think that maybe I would have wanted it?”

She shook her head. “It wouldn't have mattered. Whether you'd wanted it or not. I wasn't prepared to have it. It's my choice whether I want to carry a pregnancy to term. What would the alternative be? You force me to have a baby I don't want? Have me resent you and our kid for the rest of our lives? How is that fair?”

She sighed. All the vengeful wind was out of her sails. A heavy, thick fog was settling in, exhaustion threatening to tip the mood from furious to depressive.

She remembered a time, after Afghanistan but before the portal (because every epoch of their life together was bookmarked and defined by Tony's near-death experiences) when she'd thought about it. About having children. He'd been doing a publicity thing — Iron Man visiting a school, 'Get Involved In STEM', that sort of thing — and she'd watched him with those kids and imagined him with one of his own, a dark-haired little thing with curious eyes. Boy or girl, it wouldn't matter. He'd be the fun dad, showing the kid how to ride a bike and chasing it around the park until they both collapsed in hysterics while she'd be sat on the side, rolling her eyes.

She might have had those kind of thoughts, but then there was the other part of her too. The part that shuddered when she heard a child crying in public, the part that liked her size four figure and her on-the-go lifestyle. Yes, there would be nannies if she wanted them, but she knew herself and she knew that she'd hate not being able to give a hundred percent to everything. And she already gave a hundred percent to Tony and his company. There was no room in her life for a child without sacrificing something else.

And that was the crux of the matter. What else would she have to sacrifice? And how much of it?

Tony was saying something, but by that point she wasn’t capable of listening anymore. Her mind was reeling, running as thoughtlessly as a cow in a stampede.

She shot up from where she was sitting (when had she sat down?) and she did it with a velocity that startled Tony into momentarily shutting up. The tears appeared somewhere between the living room and the stairs, and by the time she reached the bedroom they had turned her cheeks wet and red.

Distantly, she could hear him clamber after her, calling her name, pleading and begging. She even noticed, in some corner-of-the-eye peripheral fashion, when he reached the doorway. And how he remained frozen there, rooted to his spot, staring at her in turn.

Staring at the suitcase in her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Were you expecting a Happily Ever After?


	22. Chapter 22

He took the Chevy, the cap and the plaid shirt. The goatee had smudged out — heartbreak growth, his mother used to call it — and as in the five days preceding today, he couldn’t be bothered to make a grab for the shaver. Stubbly, teary-eyed, all the markers of a good emotional whipping on showcase. Under any other circumstances the disguise would have merited a medal for Best Effort. 

The Chevy, as expected, was a shit drive. Nothing but some old tired hacks under the hood, cloth seats, plastic dashboard and a bump in the bodywork from where the previous owner had gotten themselves in a fender bender. He’d bought it off Happy a couple months back, more out of pity than anything else. It hadn’t even been Hogan’s car, but that of his current flame, a forty-something widow who’d lost her only nephew in some freak accident and was now putting her nose to the grindstone to make ends meet. A couple hundred bucks hadn’t put Tony out of the race and besides, nobody would turn their head after a bumped-up old Chevy Malibu.

He could have sent Happy if he’d wanted to, he supposed, but he didn’t want to see Happy, didn’t want anything getting back to Pepper.

She’d left on that same day, just a suitcase and a face full of streaked mascara, telling him she needed space. He’d tried calling (on the same evening no less) and nearly gotten his head bit off long-distance. The message was clear as day. Get sober or get lost. She hadn’t worded it that way, but he’d picked up on it regardless. She’d enforced a strict regimen over the years — one which he’d folded to with little actual resistance — and while he’d gotten away with the occasional aperitif wine or the social beer or two, he hadn’t touched anything hard in a long while, and certainly not in the volume of last week.

_But it was just a slip, right? A one-time-thing. You’ve been dry as dust since._

Yes. But who could blame him, really? He’d had a hell of a scare, with BARF and Rhodey and the goddamn rivets. He’d wanted to tell her, had been halfway through the story while she’d been halfway through her suitcase, but she wouldn’t have any of it. And to be fair, he’d been in no shape to spin a believable tale. He’d been too shocked by her own confession. Still was.

He parked the car in the anonymity of the mall garage. Nobody recognized him on the escalator or by the shopping cart station, and once he’d successfully cleared the launch pad of personal hygiene products he dared to let his guard down some.

For a while he loitered. Up the kitchen appliances aisle. Down the condiment lane. He shunned the liquor section like the floor was lava. Under the circumstances, his self-discipline wasn’t the best. He didn’t want to give Pepper any more good reasons, and he also didn’t want to put another dent in the Chevy or his driving record.

By the end of his prowl, the cart was filled with the usual selection of a man thrown rudely into solitary housekeeping: spaghetti, meat sauce in a jar, a dozen eggs, butter, and a package of navel oranges to protect against scurvy.

And then, somehow, he got sucked into the Feminine Products section. He couldn’t say how exactly he ended up in Lane 35, if there had been some conscious decision making progress predating the sudden turn-in or not. His was apparently the only Y chromosome lured into the spell of sanitary pads and tampons. He felt like a creep. If the admonishing look on the woman’s face sharing the aisle was anything to go by, she thought so too.

At first, he had no idea where to look. He’d never been coaxed into emergency trips to the gas station because aunt flo had turned up unannounced and in the years he’d been together with Pepper she’d handled the topic of female biology discreetly and without his input desired, much like she had handled so many other topics in their lives.

Eventually, he found them. One said _Rapid response!_ and another _99% accurate from the day of your missed period!_ Most were colored pink, with the one on sale (buy two, get three) a horrible baby blue. The lettering was big on all of them, no room for ambiguity. He supposed nobody picked up a pregnancy test ad hoc unless they were in a heightened state of either ecstatic hope or bottomless fear.

Well, anyone but Pepper. He could picture her, standing in this same aisle, looking at the same products and flipping to the back of every box before making her choice. Pepper wasn’t a risk-taker. He pegged her for Clearblue, the digital one. It seemed like the most elaborate of the bunch. Of course he would never have certainty. She could have gone for more than one, maybe made a second trip after the first one showed positive because she’d been afraid of a false result.

He picked it up and turned it over. A pixelated screen would tell you if you were PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT. It was undoubtedly some cheap sensor picking up on the same color change as any other test line before flashing its output. It would probably seem reassuringly high end to Pepper though. 

He noticed movement from the corner of his eye and quickly put the test back on the rack. The woman was peering over his shoulder. She didn’t have any kids in tow, but judging by the rings under her eyes and the resigned expression on her face she likely had more sprogs than an Irish housewife and was about to find out there was another on the way.

“You’ll want to go for the FRER,” she said, and to his utmost surprise there was no burning criticism following that. She took a First Response box from the rack and put it into his hands like it was the Holy Grail of pregnancy tests. “Less chance of a false negative.”

She gave him a look. “Might want clean yourself up before you go see her,” she added, not entirely unkindly. As she wandered off, clutching her basket, he wondered exactly what kind of assumptions she was making about him. 

He paid up at the cashier’s and drove home.

* * *

Tony had never been very good at sorting through emotional baggage, and if a four year trip past the Milky Way hadn’t been able to change that, neither would a fight gone bad with Pepper bring him any kind of epiphany.

He parked the Chevy, stored the three plastic bags of grocery in the basement fridge en bloc, plastic included, and refused to think about why he’d put that stupid test into the cart (and subsequently into the plastic bag and the fridge) instead of hanging it back where it belonged.

He went to work instead. Work was what he was good at, even — or especially — in times of duress. You didn’t come up with the schematics for Iron Man if you couldn’t hustle under pressure. Those equations had to be solved, no matter if your head was stuck down a bucket full of wastewater or somebody tried shoving their dick up your ass.

Today was different only in that there was no rocket splinter headed actively for his heart and no JARVIS counting down the dwindling oxygen reserves in the background. Today it was only Tony and Tony’s newest brainchild and the mental detachment that came with full immersion into a project.

Binarily augmented retro framing. Hijack the hippocampus, project the memory onto an external infrastructure, re-experience. For test run purposes (at least that was what he was telling himself) he would choose a nicer memory to build up on today. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he was more than a little heartsick, and not at all in a romantic, schmaltzy way.

A couple months old only, the setting was the Terrace Grille in Malibu. An exclusive, private and papz-free affair, him and Pepper and two waiters at their discretion. They’d taken a picture that evening, the two of them against a pink sunset backdrop. He’d printed out a physical copy of it, taking it now, feeling the paper’s grit between his fingertips.

Red candle, cloth napkins, no salt or pepper on the table. They’d been waiting for the entrees. He tried to actively engage, look down on the plate. Crumbs of leftover trout tatar were there. He remembered not liking it but eating it anyway. From across the table Pepper laughed about something. About a joke he’d been telling. He felt himself start to grin, even though he couldn’t call to mind what they’d talked about. His temples buzzed, the onset of the migraine. _Stay focused_ , he told himself and looked back at her.

This was why he’d chosen this moment. That sweet, carefree look in her eyes, the way the skin on her face crinkled slightly when she laughed. A snapshot in time. Blithe, feelgood. A rarity, lately.

But then she veered off-script.

“You had to go and knock me up, didn’t you?” Pepper asked in an angelic tone. He froze, trying to steer back to trout tatar and away from the perilous ground of abortion. The buzzing in his head increased.

“The appetizer was lovely, don’t you think?” he asked. He looked out over the rail where the cool Malibu breeze wafted in. The waiter would come around with the entree any minute now.

“I tested at the office,” Pepper continued despite the chronological paradox. “Can you believe that? I didn’t want you to find out, that’s where we were. But I shouldn’t have worried, should I? You wouldn’t have bothered to look up.”

The skin on the nape of his neck stood on edge. The waiter arrived, not with their hot plates of food, but with a bottle of dusty single malt Glenfiddich. Tony didn’t have to look to know that ENJOY THIS ON A GREAT DAY was scribbled on the paper label. 

“Thanks, but no,” he said. “I’m dry.”

“Are you sure, sir?” the waiter asked, holding the bottle out to him like it was a trophy prize.

“Go ahead,” Pepper goaded him. “What’s one drink? I thought you had it under control. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? A little fun can't hurt?”

“It’s a very good year, sir,” the maitre insisted.

“It would be a pity to let it go bad,” Pepper said. “But you’ve got form for that.”

“Enough!” he hissed, grounding his teeth. He pressed his eyes shut, forcing himself through a number of deep breaths, ins and outs, all vigorous attempts to calm himself down. Very slowly and enunciating every word carefully, he made an effort to mentally rewind the scene. His scene. He was in control of this. “I _said_ , the appetizer was lovely. Don’t you think so?”

He opened his eyes. Pepper sat there a little blankly, as though the program had hitched and was at a loss of how to handle the memory backpaddle.

“The appetizer? Did you like it?” he pressed.

“Sir,” the maitre repeated. Again ENJOY THIS ON A GREAT DAY was shoved under his nose. “A glass of our finest?”

He banged his fist on the table. Tartar crumbles skittered off their plate.

“No. Fucking no! Can’t you take a hint? Get out of here, goddammit!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

It wasn’t the words that had Tony snap his head to look at the guy. It was the voice. 

“Not you again,” he rasped, looking not at Malibu Grille’s maitre d’, but at Steve Rogers holding out his father’s old bottle of whiskey like a preacher’s bible on Sunday morning. “Why is it always you?”

Something clicked. Before Steve had time to come up with a bullshit excuse, Pepper’s face went from vacant to full of warmth. “It really was. I didn’t know trout could taste that good.”

Captain America looked down at them both, his mouth a thin line of disapproval, as though luxuriating in extravagant appetizers was a sin in and of itself. The following dialogue was bizarrely off-topic though. Unfortunately it was very much in-script. Just the wrong script.

“How often are you and Banner going to keep making excuses for this maniac?” Steve asked the room at large and it was all wrong, because Pepper hadn’t been there. But Tony knew what was coming. And he was petrified. 

“I’m gonna call quits on this,” he threatened. 

“No, you won’t.” 

Steve’s hand wrapped around his arm. His good arm. His _only_ good arm.

“Your father would be ashamed of you. Which was the bigger disappointment, do you think? Your promiscuity, your drinking and drug use or the fact that every idea you've had was derivative of something he'd already thought up?” With his other hand, Steve put the bottle down in front of him. This time it was no question. “No wonder she didn’t want your kid.”

“Steve, you need to let go.” 

That was Pepper, only… not really. Her face was melting, distorting, her freckled skin turning livid with gashes. Her straight blonde hair had curled into shorter reddish strands and her voice dropped to that unmistakable breathy tone. 

The pressure on his arm increased. Just a moment from now he’d hear the snap, like the snap of a branch underfoot or the crack of ice releasing a flood, a torrent to sweep away the senses— 

_— it’s not real it’s not DON’T LOSE CONTROL —_

There they were, Natasha, Rhodey, Bruce, all suddenly crowded around the table for two, every one of them watching and doing nothing to stop it. Again.

“Terminate!” Tony commanded, and the Malibu backdrop gave way to the white linen-covered basement. He clawed off the VR goggles as though they were burning his face.

Then, wow. It leaked out of him like air from a punctured tire. Stupid bitch, why hadn’t she just told him when she’d suspected? Stupid, inconsiderate bitch to leave him alone like this. He’d have held her hand through all of it, no questions asked. But no, she had to have gone at it on her own. And for what? To shove the blame at his door later only because he’d slipped off the wagon once? Had she been saving it all along for ammunition, a good stick to beat him with on a rainy day?

He bunched up the paper printout and threw it against the far off wall.

_ And what will you do about it? _

A drink was what he should do, and then maybe another one to scratch the first one’s back. He got up before deciding that wasn’t a very good idea at all. But he was on his feet by that point, and headed on like a rocket towards the basement fridge. He ripped open the fridge door with a rage that was reserved entirely for Pepper or entirely for himself (he hadn’t yet decided) and rummaged through the plastic bags of grocery until his fingers clasped around a small paper box.

 _99% accurate from the day of your missed period!_ the label promised. 

He took it, went to the garbage chute, and chucked it down with the force of a pitcher going for a third strike with a fastball.

Let the stupid thing fester there with all his other demons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony, veteran of unhealthy coping mechanisms. Don't you all love him for that?


	23. Chapter 23

“Wait, you _what?_ ” 

Sam took another swig of his Pabst. The wheelchair creaked as he leaned back and gave a heartfelt laugh, one of those good belly laughs that surprises you by the way it bursts from your lips in public.

At least somebody was getting their comedic relief from this one.

“So she looks you up in the phone book, flies all the way out to D.C. — with her personal bouncer in tow, no less — and when she shows you an outdated xerox of daddy Stark’s 5-0-2, the only thing crossing your mind is that she somehow discovered you had a fling with her boyfriend’s father under a panzerkampfwagen back in Hitler’s prime?”

Steve put his head into his hands. He wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

Sam, for one, was definitely enjoying this too much, and every second of it at Steve’s expense.

“What did she say? I mean, did she say anything at all, or did she just kinda stare at you like a Nazi looking in the ark of the covenant?”

“She just said ‘Thank you’,” Steve muttered. “No more and no less.”

“Mhmmm. You know, I’ve seen her once, it must have been late ‘13, early ‘14. The rebuilding efforts were well underway. She was doing a press tour across the country. Charity something-or-other — say what you will, but that company did a lot of good back in the day — and I remember that I went to see her speak. She’d always come across to me a little uptight, but she was a good public speaker. Before Stark came back from space, she was relatable to us ordinary mortals. She’d lost someone, everybody else lost someone too, you know how the story goes. Sure, to our faces she’d talk about how we’re all sitting in the same boat and everyone needs to take their turn at the paddles, and when she got back to her duplex on Park Avenue she’d tell her friends how she hasn’t managed to get the stink of our factories out of her hair yet, but at least she did something. At least she was willing to plug some financial holes for the people who really needed it. That’s a lot more than them others did.”

“Yes,” Steve agreed, not one to contest Pepper Potts’ humanitarian efforts. Still, they were ranking pretty low on his current priorities list. “But what am _I_ going to do now?”

“About your elephantine slip-up?” Sam asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’d let it go and hope for the best. If she told him, he’d be rapping on your door by now, ready to bust your chops.” Sam pointed to the otherwise empty living room. “And he ain’t here. You got away with it this time. Just make sure not to poke the same bear again.”

“And her?” Steve asked. He hadn’t felt so much deference towards a woman ever since he’d met Peggy Carter on Camp Lehigh’s running track back in ‘42. He wondered if Pepper Potts had this impact on others, too. She had a steeliness that differentiated her from her predecessors, so the media claimed; she was the first and only to bridle the likes of Tony Stark. Now Steve could understand why.

“Don’t grind her gears. She came under a white flag in a time where everyone’s going behind each others’ backs. Only because you were too dense to catch on doesn’t mean she’ll sell you out. I think she’s waiting for your move now. In fact, I think _everyone’s_ waiting for Captain America’s move now. You sat out way too many rounds. People will start to get real nervous real soon. And you don’t want to be caught with your pants around your feet when they do.”

“No,” Steve agreed.

Sam was right.

It was time to take the bit between his teeth and go.

* * *

The practical implementation, however, wasn’t quite as off-the-cuff as Steve would have hoped. For one, there was SHIELD. While Fury had given him reasonably free rein over the Winter Soldier project, Steve wasn’t at all inclined to share any real discoveries if he was to find them. Call it gut instinct or call it a healthy dose of common sense. If Hydra had undermined the agency, then everyone was a potential threat. Including Nick Fury. Especially Nick Fury.

But it was also clear that he wasn’t getting anywhere on the official intel. Like him, Natasha had kept the better part of her revelations off the books; case in point, the clues she’d left for him and Bruce. Which brought it all full circle.

He had to get a hold of Bruce Banner.

But that was easier said than done. One of the fine-print clauses in his amended employment agreement specifically prohibited him from contacting two individuals: Bruce Robert Banner and Anthony Edward Stark. The latter wasn’t a crunch. Tony himself had come forth with that restraining order which still sat contentedly at the bottom of Steve’s dustbin, and he felt no urge to remedy that situation. Especially after the predicament with Pepper Potts.

That was where Sam got in. Sam had offered to play the go-between. Steve, of course, had vehemently negated this at first, listing all the usual reasons. That it was too dangerous, that Sam held no personal stakes in this and the classic, that there ought to be another way. Only there wasn’t, at least none that Steve could think of. He played briefly with the thought of approaching Clint Barton — in Natasha’s name if nothing else — but scrapped the idea faster than a lead brick. Clint, Natasha and Bruce were a ballistic combination of the worst kind. Besides, he needed Bruce alive, not with an arrow trough each of his eyeballs.

To his grievance, that really only left Sam. Which was a double bummer, because it came on the heels of a protracted I-told-you-so lecture from his new friend. “You can’t always play it safe, Cap. And you can’t protect everyone. Do your job and let me do mine. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

Sam got on a Greyhound bound for the West Coast the very next morning. They exchanged burner phones. Steve hung back. He had preparations to make.

And he had to talk to one last liaison of Nat’s.

* * *

He stood in the anteroom; shoulders rolled back, heels touching, arms straight down at his side. At attention. He’d dressed in uniform, finding nothing else appropriate. This wasn’t just any man he was visiting.

Alexander Pierce was a retired Lieutenant General with the Army, a former Secretary to the World Security Council and a paramount character in the reclamation of the Naval Base in San Diego in 2013 during the last months of the Chitauri War.

Apparently he had also been one of Natasha’s few official assets concerning Zimniy Soldat. 

Pierce was a man who’d seen a lot and done more. He carried himself with the air of someone long used to a position of conspicuous power and influence. He was marked deeply by pride; pride of birth, of intellect, of culture. He was someone to look up to, and he knew it.

“At ease, soldier,” he said by way of greeting. Steve relaxed. They shook hands.

“Thank you for having me, sir. I understand it’s been of short notice. I appreciate the favor.”

Pierce nodded but didn’t comment either way. They went back out onto the veranda, which overlooked the big oaks and pleasantly unfussy garden. An aide brought them drinks, brandy and water. 

“How can I help you, Captain?” 

Steve looked out at the countryside. How could Pierce help? That was a good question. It had been one thing to make up his mind and seek out the General, a roll of the dice among Natasha’s many listed contacts. But now that he was here among the vineyards and the grapes of Pierce’s retirement home, Steve wasn’t quite sure on how to proceed next. He could hardly go ahead and frontal assault Pierce about it; he needed to sound out the situation first, see how much Pierce knew, how much he’d told Natasha, and how much she’d actually forwarded to Fury. If things were sitting pretty, maybe he’d drop a hint or two about Hydra, see if Pierce bit.

“Sir, are you familiar with a certain Natasha Romanoff?”

Pierce smiled, almost reminiscent. “I knew her as Nancy Roberts when we were first introduced. But it comes down to the same. My condolences. I heard you were closely acquaintanced.”

He was thrown about Pierce’s comment, wondering how much more the man knew than he let on and then wondering whether all the secrecy and peeking and prying had not instilled a good dose of paranoia in him. While he’d known Natasha, had even counted her among the small group of people qualifying as ‘friends’, he’d never much talked about it in public. Maybe Pierce had just tried to be polite. Not everybody was out for Steve’s head. 

“When was the last time you met her?” he asked.

“Oh, it must have been a few years ago now,” Pierce said. “I saw her during the war a lot. She ran some reconnaissance for me in collab with SHIELD. She was good at staying undetected if she wanted to. Sometimes, when additional firepower was needed, she would go in accompanied by a second agent. His name slips my mind, but you can look him up in the mission reports if you need to. You have a level 5 clearance, don’t you? That should grant you access.”

“I don’t need his name, sir, but thank you.”

He didn’t need to pull out any report. Where Natasha had gone, Clint Barton had never been far behind.

“She was reassigned at some point down the line, shortly before we retook Santa Monica. I retired three months after that, as you may know.”

Steve nodded. Santa Monica had been the turning point in the war, owed mostly to Bruce Banner’s involvement. Steve guessed that the transfer Pierce was talking about was Natasha being brought in to convince Bruce into action. It had worked, splendidly so, if you were willing to ignore the catastrophic byeffects of the Hulk’s deployment. They’d needed six weeks to recapture and rein in Bruce’s alter ego, a time in which he’d vaporized not only Chitauri hotspots, but countless civilian refugee outposts. Steve had forgotten the exact number, but the death toll had been disastrous.

“Son,” Pierce suddenly said, “you’re not here to talk about Agent Romanoff, and we both know it.”

Instantly, the hackles rose on his back. 

“Sir?”

“There isn’t any surveillance here, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I wasn’t—”

“No. No, of course you weren’t,” Pierce interrupted, and then raised his hand in a beckoning gesture. “I understand. It’s difficult to give trust in such trying times and even harder to earn it. Ms Romanoff was the same. A beneficial trait in your line of work, wouldn’t you say?”

“Essential, sir.”

“I’d imagine so. But what Ms Romanoff had in addition to that, and in abundance, is what you’re missing. The clock will run out soon.” 

He took a sip of his brandy, slow and savoring and painfully unsettling.

“If you’re here to talk about the asset, we should get down to business. There is a lot you’ll want to know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Steve, I bet there's a lot you'll want to know about what your BFF's been up to the last 70 years or so. Won't steer you away from a bad decision though, will it?


	24. Chapter 24

The first thing that irritated her was the pick of lunch venue. 

With Stark Industries all but tanking, she thought he might be a little less extravagant with his choice of place. It wasn't as though either of them were hurting financially in the grand scheme of things; Tony was old money through and through and Pepper had been smart enough with her private investments that she could comfortably never work again if she didn't want to. But people had lost their jobs, ordinary workers had been laid off, funding had been pulled from projects, shareholders were rightly panicking and hundreds of people had been left in limbo over this mess. An upmarket lunch just seemed tone deaf in light of it all.

But she wanted to see him. She was worried about him. The last thing Tony needed was to be alone in a big house full of his own demons. Even the thought of it brought a lump to her throat. She imagined him drinking himself stupid in the basement, alone. She imagined the media's endless speculation, both him and her being dragged through the tabloid muck. And lastly, she hated the idea to waking up without him every morning, to roll over and see nothing but an empty bed where he should be.

This was only supposed to be a break, a temporary thing while she got her head together. She owed it to him to face him sooner or later. At least on paper, she was still his girlfriend. Although what Pepper amounted to on paper didn't count for much. 

She'd started putting out feelers for other jobs, just to see what her options were, but the slew of polite brush offs told her that nobody was willing to touch her with a barge pole. If the captain of the Titanic had survived, nobody would be falling over themselves to offer him another ship. She was, by association, as toxic as Tony.

She decided, still, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Hi, Tony.”

To his credit, he shot out of his chair as soon as he saw her, nearly tripping over his own feet in an attempt to accommodate her. 

“Thank you for coming,” he said, and as far as first words went, he could have probably scored worse. “I’m really glad. I thought a lot about it— about us, and…” He sat up a little straighter, cleared his throat. “I’m really bad at this. But I want to apologize.”

He was going for cute. He had the cheek to try that manufactured authenticity shtick on her, when she was the one who'd gotten the PR guys to coach him in it. The fangirls loved it. A little bit of bashfulness – _ see, girls, even superheroes get awkward sometimes! They're just like us! _ She almost snorted at 'I'm really bad at this.'

An apology was a start though. She was holding her breath as to whether it would be sincere or whether he would just tell her what he thought she wanted to hear, because he wanted her to come home and carry on managing his life.

“Okay,” she said, tapping on the menu with one finger. She wasn't quite in the right headspace to deal with this, couldn't play the patient, calm, at most mildly-exasperated Pepper that Tony wanted and needed. She'd left that Pepper somewhere in a corrugated hut in the middle of the desert, surrounded by government agents and frightened out of her wits.

“So what do you want to apologize for?” she asked. She'd be surprised if Tony was capable of the introspection needed to realize just how badly this was going. He was trying to appease her, only she didn't want to be appeased. She wanted to feel vindicated.

Which was why she shouldn't have come today.

The waiter took their orders before Tony could dive into repentance. He ordered a steak, she a salad.

“I think I should start with a general apology,” he said. “I get that most of the blame is at home on this side of the table. Guilty as charged. With the company, with BARF, and…” He broke gaze and the emotion displaying on his face next was genuine, at least she wanted to believe so. It was shame. Virgin territory as far as Tony was concerned. “I’m really sorry about what happened the other day.”

Her lips were a thin white line. “Tony, don’t start with that, please. Not here.” If he was going to spend a stupid amount on a meal, the least he could have done was get private dining. But no, the place was starting to fill up with the elite's equivalent of the lunchtime rush hour. “If you're hoping for a scene, you're not going to get one.”

She'd maintained a dignified stance on it all, resolutely so, up until now. He wasn't going to strip that away from her as well. A Michelin Star restaurant was not the place for them to air out the more tawdry aspects of their relationship gone wrong. 

At the time, she'd been too stunned. Later, seething into her pillow in an empty bed, she would furiously run through all the things she wished she'd said back to him instead of just standing there with the cell pressed to her ear.

It had been late, and they hadn’t talked at all since the day she’d fled Malibu like a flash of light, unable to be in the same room with him after the baby bomb. He hadn’t even tried to stop her. Maybe he’d been too bowled over by the news or too hungover by the booze. He’d called later, but she’d shot him down in five words flat.  _ Back off. I need time. _

After that, radio silence. She took the jet to Manhattan, he had the good graces to stay put in California. She’d had time to calm down, to see things for what they were, to take stock of her emotional luggage.

All those times when she'd found herself looking for an out, even just as a fleeting thought, and he'd basically given her a floodlit path to the exit if that was what she wanted. Before, there was no way she could have left him. Even if she'd wanted to, the choice wouldn’t have been hers. Not after what he'd been through.

The thing was, she didn't want to bail. Not really. When Tony had been in protracted recovery for the arm, she was ashamed to admit that the break had been a relief, that she didn't have to be on hand twenty-four-seven to anticipate his needs like she had been on the island.

The idea of handing him off again was so tempting, but the problem was that this time there was nobody to hand him off to. She supposed that maybe she could try to get Bruce to come and keep an eye on him. If Tony didn't have someone constantly calling him on his bullshit, if it went unchecked and enabled, his demons grew to biblical proportions.   


“We can talk,” she told him now. “But if you think this is going to be like all the other times, if you think you get a free pass because you say a few nice things and call me 'babe', then you're delusional.”

“Jesus, I just want to talk,” he said, visibly overwhelmed by her take-no-prisoners approach. “Can’t you at least give me a chance?”

She put her glass down with more force than necessary and tried to keep her face as neutral as possible for the benefit of the other diners. How dare he pretend that he had the moral high ground here? Why was the onus always on her to be nice about everything? Why did Tony Stark get to constantly detonate his emotions everywhere like a one man nuclear holocaust, but she was somehow the one at fault the moment she dipped a toe over the line of being sweet and forgiving?

She was about to volley back, about how if he wanted to build bridges he could start by not showing up half-cut to a date or how much that phone call had hurt her or that he ought to finally stop being a child and step in to help her patch the holes in the boat they were both sitting in.

But she only got to swallow the commentary dead in her throat as a flash suddenly triggered to her right.

“Mr Stark! Ms Potts! Any commentary on yesterday’s stock drop? Where does this leave the future of the company?”

She could see a snarl taking shape on Tony’s face, which was entirely unlike his usual look of calm self-satisfaction when confronted with a camera lens. “Get lost, pal,” he was hissing. “We’re a little busy here. Get a fucking appointment like everyone else.”

Pepper ignored the reporter, pretended he wasn’t there. The damage was done; by tomorrow they’d be all over the tabloids with some speculation about their relationship or liberal thinkpieces would be cropping up online about how they had the audacity to blow hundreds on lunch while SI employees lost their jobs by the scores.  


She said loudly to Tony, “Will you pay up? We wouldn’t want to miss that two o’clock.”

There was no two o’clock, of course, but Tony played along and settled the bill without much fuss. By then the intruder had been carted off and they walked out the back. They got into the waiting car together, because going separate ways at this point would set the press off like sharks scenting blood in the water.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said reprovingly once the door was shut. Mouthing off to the media might have worked as a gimmick in the past, but it wasn’t making them any friends now. “It just encourages them.”

“I suppose,” Tony said wearily, looking out the window. Word must have gotten around. The street, serenely empty just minutes before, was now stuffed with telephotos and parabolic microphones. “Goddamn parasites,” he muttered, then turned to her. “We’ll be stuck with them on our tail for a while.”

He didn’t ask, but she knew what he was hinting at. She’d been renting a penthouse suite downtown since she’d come back from New York. It wasn’t a secret, at least not to Tony. But having the media find out about it could be disastrous, a hit they needn’t take.

She had nothing with her save for her handbag, but it didn't matter. Her blouses and skirts still hung pressed in Tony's wardrobe and her pyjamas and underwear were still neatly folded in his drawers. 

She'd been existing in a sort of twilight world of crisp white hotel sheets and serviced apartments since walking out that day. She hadn't cared where she was going, only knowing that she needed to put as much distance between herself and Tony as possible before whatever charged atmosphere was between them exploded into something atomic that would take them both out. It had been self preservation, but more than that it had been some instinctive need to preserve what was left of their relationship, hitting the pause button before they could tear each other apart. Tony hadn't seen it like that. But he'd never been the sensible one.

“Okay,” she relented eventually, folded her arms across her lap and let Happy drive them home.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This is not a happy chapter. Triggers ahead.

No takeout place was going to get through the hordes of reporters ringing the perimeter like extras in a Romero film, but Tony had sent Happy out through the back way for pizza, which sounded a lot better than the single wilting lettuce head that held the fort in the refrigerator.

She had changed into a t-shirt and yoga pants and almost immediately began to comb through the usual suspects online. Her dress had been picked in anticipation of appearing in a single gossip column shot at most. It was now plastered on every twitter account and would probably be on every major news station by the next full hour. She'd let her composure slip for a fraction of a second, and it was that momentary deer-in-headlights look which was now accompanying most articles.

She walked barefoot back into the lounge just in time for Happy to return victorious. He looked immensely proud of himself and she thought that getting past that number of reporters was actually no mean feat, so she shot him a grateful smile. He slunk off, patting the cellphone that he wore in a leather and velcro holder on his belt like it was still the late 90's, a silent call-me-if-you-need-me gesture. He had his own bolthole nearby, outside the house but within spitting distance.

She didn't wait for Tony before opening the box on the coffee table and taking a slice. She was quite hungry; she’d barely touched her protest salad at the restaurant.

When Tony eventually appeared in the doorway, he looked a little surprised. Eating pizza out of the box wasn’t something she normally did. Eating pizza out of the box was the sort of thing you did when you were twenty and trying to impress a guy with how laid back you were, pretending that you weren’t like all the other girls who counted calories and got up at 5AM for daily gym sessions. Because it wasn’t enough to just be attractive, you had to be effortlessly attractive. God forbid you might put too much work in, or (the cardinal sin) seem shallow about it. Tony wasn’t stupid or naive in that regard and she had always valued that she didn’t have to create some pretend laid back pizza-box fantasy for him.

“Well, you’ve just thwarted my plans of eating myself into a coronary,” he said listlessly. “Half the grease won’t cut it.”

The smile she gave him was tight and tense, more the ghost of an acknowledgment that he'd made a joke than anything else.

“If you had a heart attack we could at least use it to spin some sympathy points with the public.”She shoved the carton in his direction. “There's still some pepperoni left. If you don't mind the irony.”

He poked at a piece, picking the pepperoni slice from the cheese. He dropped it on the soggy cardboard.

“What?” she said. “You’d prefer Burger King?”

“Is this how it’s going to go now?” he asked, keeping his eyes sternly locked on his current handiwork. “Can’t you just let it out? I’d rather have it all, now, without the cameras.”

She folded her feet underneath her, pulling the throw from the couch and wrapping it around her shoulders like it was a suit of armor that would protect her. She didn’t know what she wanted, couldn’t work out what part of her feelings were real and which were just familiarity and habit. Caring about him through reflex. Wasn’t that a depressing thought?

“Wouldn’t you rather do this in a therapist’s office?”

“You might as well lay it on me,” Tony insisted. “You’re itching to. You’ve been itching to for months.”

“The drinking’s a problem,” she said, almost instantaneously. “And the other stuff—”

He winced, a physical cringe. “Don’t. Please. I’m mortified, actually dying a little inside, that you saw me like that. It was a low moment. I don’t know what came over me. You know that’s not me. I’ve just been th—”

“Been through a lot,” she finished for him, exhausted. “I know that, Tony. But at what point do we accept that neither of us can change the past? Medication, drinking, porn. Even BARF. None of it will buy back those four years of your life. They’re gone. All you can do now is not screw up what you have left.”

“And have I?” he wanted to know. “Because every minute up there, it was you, the memory of you that kept me going. It’s always been you, Pep.”

“And sometimes that’s a hell of a lot of pressure,” she said quietly.

He shrugged. “Healthy coping mechanisms were never really in my toolkit.”

That was one thing she loathed about him. The irrefutable sense of who he was, that self-assuredness that made up so much of his public persona, was the same trait that wrapped like a blindfold around his eyes when it came to issues like these. That not having something in your toolkit was not the same as being unable to acquire it. It was simply an unwillingness to do so. He had never gotten that subtle difference.

His hand settled on her thigh, and suddenly he was sitting a lot closer than before. The opposite ends of the sofa that had been staked out like battle lines were now blurring into uncertain no-man’s land.

When an entire relationship is predicated on physical intimacy, it was difficult to change the language with the flick a switch. If she made him back off now, he would think she was angling for a fight.

Tony construed the impassivity as invitation. He leaned down to kiss her, and she tipped her head up in pure reflex, trying to feel convinced.

She kept on trying even as his fingers hovered around the hem of her tee, at first only toying with the fabric and, when no resistance came, creeping under it and up.

“Mhmm, I missed that,” he was murmuring in that husky rumble that let her know, in no uncertain terms, where he intended to take this. Her own hand traveled briefly over the crotch of his pants and she was not at all surprised to feel the bulge of his erection. It never took a lot to turn Tony on.

His hands moved to her breasts. She let him, if only because her inner dispute was drowning out everything else. The way his thumbs brushed over her nipples didn’t turn her on, the stimulation feeling more like an irritation than a prelude. She closed her eyes and tried to get into it. Maybe they needed this, she told herself, some cathartic conclusion to the past few weeks.

With her tee up and over her head, he pushed her back against the linen throw of the sofa. Her skin felt feverish, but not in arousal. Goosebumps formed like a wildfire up her arms and down her legs. Tony was slobbering over her, kissing and licking at her neck while all she could do was stare fixedly at the ceiling. She hoped he wasn't planning to go down on her. When his thumbs hooked at the waistband of her underwear she rolled to the side to block him.

He laughed huskily, taking it as an invitation to flip her over. She’d loved that laugh once; the way it was tinged at the edges with lust had always flipped her stomach in the most delicious way. Today, it only grated.

Tony, oblivious, continued to reel off his repertoire. How he’d missed her, how beautiful she was, so hot for him, how bad he wanted her. Her left leg was starting to cramp. He pulled her ass cheeks apart and she wondered if he’d notice that she wasn’t even remotely aroused. But no. Maybe he needed to get the moisture sensation fixed on his prosthetic hand.

It didn’t hurt when he pushed inside her, but the angle was awkward. She felt trapped under a tangle of limbs and sweat and the casing of his reactor, which rubbed against her spine. Tony was whispering her name in hot wet breaths like a prayer. His hands roughly cupped her breasts and she ground her back teeth as he started to play with her nipples again. She reached up and moved them to the flat of her stomach. Tony took it as ‘go harder’ and grabbed her hips, pounding into her.

She closed her eyes. Images came unbidden to her mind’s eye. Empty bottles, charts of plummeting stock, the way the gums had started to recede around his bottom teeth, her dead uncle, that rotting stump of arm in the hospital, the pessary pills sitting in her hand right before she’d shoved them inside herself.

“Babe, babe, that’s it. Yeah. Oh yeah.”

She couldn’t breathe. The feeling of skin covering skin was unbearable, like a shroud, or a straight jacket.

“Tony.”

“Pep, oh Pep—”

“Tony.” Growling, she repeated, “Tony, stop.”

Only he wasn’t stopping, long past the point where his brain handled executive decisions. He was breathing harder and harder, slamming into her, moaning her name.

“Tony.” Louder. “Tony, stop.”

He came inside her with a throaty gasp, and she all but shrugged him off. She could feel him staring at her from behind, and she was aware of the sensation of semen running down the inside of her leg.

“Sorry, doll,” he was saying, pulling his slacks back up. “That was really bad timing. You alright?”

“Can you get me a towel?” she deflected in an attempt to circumvent any post-coital retrospective. Was it as good for you honey? If he kept looking at her like that, like everything was somehow fixed, she thought that she might actually start to cry.

Tony got up, but she didn’t wait for him to return. When he was out of sight, she grabbed her tee and cleaned herself up as best as she could. She wrapped the throw from the sofa around herself like a haphazard cocoon. On tiptoes she slunk up the stairs, beelining it for the master bedroom.

She fired up the shower in the en suite, turning the thermostat all the way to scorching. What was wrong with her? Wasn’t a reconciliation what she’d hoped for? She knew from experience that sex would settle most issues for Tony. He’d blow his load and all would be good again in his world. So what was the problem?

She turned off the water, stepping out of the walk-in and in front of the steamy mirror. Wiping it clear, she saw that traces of mascara had smudged over her cheeks, and the lump in her throat rose up again. Seeing herself like that made her ashamed.

Tony was climbing the stairs; she could hear the dull thumping of his ascent and quickly grabbed a towel to wrap around herself. She didn’t want him to get any ideas. When she left the en suite he was standing in the doorway, a washrag from the kitchen held triumphantly in one hand.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said, all boyish optimism. “But I guess you're fine. I put on some tea. The one you like. I thought we cou—”

“Tony?” she said, and now the tears were just below the surface, held back only by pure strength of will.

“No tea? I can throw on the espresso machine, but I know how you feel about coffee after—”

“It’s not that. Can you just stop for a minute?”

His face went lax. The smile dissolved like salt in vinegar.

She pushed through.

“Can you sleep in the guest room tonight?”


	26. Chapter 26

Was this what his life had come down to? Sitting at home, being instantly and constantly available in case Tony Stark deigned to give him a call? Maybe. He could imagine it was a clause in his employment contract, hidden in some inconspicuous paragraph in the fine print he’d never bothered to read.

The problem was, Tony’s calls had been fewer and further between, bottoming out to a flat no-contact line. His obsession with bringing back JARVIS and Bruce’s skepticism thereof was probably just the tip of the iceberg when it came to their strained working relationship. And he had an idea that Tony’s prolonged silence wasn’t stemming solely from his disdain towards Bruce this time around.

All Bruce had to do to confirm that suspicion was turn on the TV. There it would be, an endless media speculation about the trainwreck that seemed to be Pepper and Tony’s private lives, luridly curated in crisp HD. The more Bruce tried not to take sides, the more it was impossible to stay neutral, especially since he had far more background knowledge than the excited show host on TMZ.

He'd tried to talk about his concerns once, with Happy, but that had been met with an evasiveness that was both unhelpful and not entirely unexpected. Happy was fiercely loyal to his bosses, and if Bruce had ever had enough of a rapport with him to be able to talk frankly about Tony, that goodwill had evaporated when he upped and left for Russia.

“Ain’t none of my business,” Happy had said, eyes on the road, and what he didn’t have to say aloud was ‘Neither should it be yours’. But if not theirs, whose else? And why, if things really were as grave, didn’t either Tony and Pepper reach out to him as a friend?

 _Because there’s no more obvious way to show you how little they think of you_ , that slippery grey voice in his head proposed.

He’d tried contacting Pepper, but had been met with silence and no returned calls. Usually if Tony decided not to grace him with a summons, Pepper would at least follow it up with something light and breezy; ‘just a check-in’ or a casual mention of ‘Tony’s been really busy lately’. It was, he supposed, her way of trying to be courteous.

She was good with people like that. Good enough that even though Bruce knew that he was being managed, up until this point he hadn’t really minded.

And she was far, far too good with Tony. People speculated, unkindly, that Pepper Potts was nothing without the boss she’d slept with to get to the top, when in fact she held a lot more power than he did. Tony was nothing without Pepper, not the other way around. She’d been essentially running his company when she’d been on a PA’s job title and salary, and he’d been nose-deep in blow and bringing home a different girl every night.

Bruce was surprised to find how much their private quarrels got to him on a personal level. Although they were the only reason why he’d gotten free of the ankle monitor, he felt more trapped than ever, like the family dog caught in the middle of an ugly impending divorce.

But what other options did he have? He wasn’t prepared to go back to house arrest under the hospitality of SHIELD and Pepper and her company were the only ones with enough legal clout to protect him from the mess of trouble he was in.

He found himself thinking longingly of Kolkata. He even reminisced about that bottling plant in South America, demeaning as it had been. He thought of all the places that had seemed such a miserable demotion of his station at the time, and now looked like the golden days compared to the axe that was hanging over his head.

He could have taken a comfortable faculty position after his postdoc. He could have settled with a plain but nice girl and popped out a couple of children instead of signing up for Thaddeus Ross’ stupid project and falling for the first of many women who were wildly out of his league.

And what did he have now? A pretence of a job and a pretence of a life and a thousand reasons to put off that one unavoidable decision.

“No, enough of that,” he said, catching himself off-guard by speaking out loud in his apartment, which was nothing but another whitewashed cage.

He spent the rest of the afternoon packing, managing to fill half a duffel with clothes and everyday odds and ends. He’d done the same a little over a year ago, as high as a junkie on possibility and adrenaline for the clues Natasha had left him. There was little of that today, and he was surprised to find a complete absence of a queasy conscience in light of it.

The only emotion still in the game was dread.

Because this time, he’d say farewell. This time he’d be honest.

* * *

On the drive up to Malibu, his indefatigable resolution to confront Tony and Pepper dispersed some. By the time the driver pulled into the private road that snaked up to Tony’s mansion, Bruce had come up with a handful of bullshit excuses for why he needed to leave, one more laughable than the other.

The worst thing was, he kept imagining Tony, distracted by some insignificance or other, cocking an eyebrow at the end of Bruce’s lengthy monologue and going, ‘Huh? Say again? I tuned you out there for a sec.’

That disrespect. That scant regard. It made his blood boil, and it hadn’t even happened yet. He hoped Pepper would be there to defuse the situation. If he was honest, it was for her sake he was doing this in the first place. He couldn’t care less about what Tony thought — if he even noticed anything outside of his obsessive simulations these days — but he owed Pepper a face-to-face.

The cab let him out at the fence line where he flashed his tag with the guard on duty. There was a moment’s suspense as he waited for his name to ring affirmative on the guest list, then the guard nodded his OK. If Bruce wanted him to give him a ride up to the main entrance via the estate buggy? No, he needed to stretch his legs, but thanks for the offer. Bruce wondered if the guy was new.

He took his time strolling up the winded driveway, going over his possible openers in his head. They were a little past the conventional hey-how-are-you’s and even so Bruce doubted he’d be able to eke any truth out of that question. He’d go for honesty. Honesty was always a good place to start screwing up.

He gave the doorbell a tap and waited patiently for some sort of response, not at all alarmed when five minutes later he was still standing in front of a closed door. That surprise element had lost its effect.

He let himself in, unable to decide whether for a man in Tony’s position leaving the front door unlocked was bold or simply reckless. As expected, nobody showed up to greet him. He forewent the tour of the house this time around, beelining for the basement stairs. If Tony was at home, he would be down there.

“Hello? Tony?” he called, even as he was descending. If Tony was hooked up to BARF, he wouldn’t hear him… but it still made for good manners to announce his presence.

But Tony wasn’t hooked up to BARF. Tony wasn’t there at all.

“Hello?” Bruce called again, this time louder. “Pepper?” he tried in a last-ditch attempt, but that yielded only silence too. It seemed confirmed.

The house was empty.

* * *

He didn’t feel too guilty going through the basement’s inventory. He made sure to steer clear of the car; a collector’s dream, that big old automotive dinosaur with its curvy lines and whitewall tires. He’d expected it to be in mint condition — surely only in such would it retain its value — but it looked like it had been recently used, and not gently. Dried muck clung to the frame. A long, unsightly dent ran along the driver’s side, disrupting the intricate flame stencil. Bruce didn’t want to imagine what a repair on that would cost. Enough to feed a family for a year in some parts of the world he thought, sanctimoniously.

He shrugged it off. What he was far more interested in lay on Tony’s hard drives rather than in his car collection. Although he was still of the firm conviction that Tony’s obsession with JARVIS was nothing but that — a fixation — some of the data was just too convenient to be incidental.

Someone wanted Tony Stark in Sokovia, and Bruce doubted it was to shake hands and talk peace. He’d been burned too often to fall for that same lie again. But what was Tony on to? Was he pursuing one of Natasha’s old trails too? Were they all turning at the same Rubik’s cube without knowing it?

He let the workstation boot, trying to gauge realistically how many of Tony’s firewalls he’d be able to hop in order to glean a glance into the forbidden. While he waited, he explored. There wasn’t a lot of printed memorandums lying about, but he’d never pegged Tony as someone to leave potential innovations carelessly out in the open anyway. If there was anything to uncover, it was surely doubly and triply encrypted.

But it wasn’t a chance discovery which picked Bruce’s attention eventually. It was, as they so aptly say, curiosity which finally got the cat.

He’d never registered before that the garage wasn’t the lowest level of the house. There were stairs leading deeper into the basement. And down below someone had left the lights on.

With his heart suddenly in his throat at the idea of not being alone after all, Bruce looked down the stairwell like a kid afraid to roll over and look for the monster under the bed. Was Tony down there? Were they both down there, watching him on one of the many surveillance cameras? Getting one over on him? Laughing at his incompetence?

“Hello? Are you down there?” And then — it took all his courage — “I know you’re down there, Tony. You caught me. You had your way. Come up now. I’m here to talk.”

Tony didn’t come. Only the light persevered, tempting him like a moth to a flame. He grabbed the handrail like a buoy and counted fifteen steps down into the most staggering wine cellar he’d ever seen.

Ambient light emphasized the rows and rows of bottles. It was what had drawn him down the stairs. But it was not what kept him there. The stairs led deeper still. He tried to visualize how deeply this was situated in the landscape. Tony must have carved out half the cliffside when he’d built the place. It was mind-blowing, if only from an architectural standpoint.

The stairs now led to what seemed to be the lowest level. He found himself facing a solid set of double doors; stuff right out of a high-security bumper or a come-alive science fiction epic. There were fingerprint scanners and retinal detectors and more surveillance cameras than in the Pentagon, beady digital eyes watching him from all angles.

Tony’s very own unbreakable fort.

And it just so happened that he’d left the front door not only ajar, but wide open.

It was a temptation Bruce just could not resist.

* * *

What Tony affectionately dubbed the Hall Of Armors, Bruce thought of as the Iron Junkyard. Hidden from the world like neglected, unloved children this little underground tomb was home to robotics and schematics of the olden day — exhausted, outdated, superseded.

The most arresting was surely the big hulk of metal of Tony’s premier suit. Forged in a dingy cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan it looked its origin; crude and bulky, limited in functionality and nowhere near the sleek and innovative design of its successors. There were bullet holes and scratches, and what hadn’t been damaged during its initial run had fallen victim to corrosion over the years. It didn’t look like Tony had ever taken the time to restore it. Bruce very much doubted that it was still operative… and wondered to what extent it had been in its prime.

Despite there being seven containment units, only four of them were occupied. One by the Afghanistan armor — Mark I read the little metal plaque installed at the bottom. Of its brethren only Mark III, Mark IV and and a heavily damaged Mark VI were present. Bruce recognized the latter from 2012. Tony had worn it on the helicarrier.

The other three — Mark II, tagged “War Machine”, Mark V and Mark VII — were absent. Bruce could well remember where II and VII had met their end. There had been nothing left of War Machine after their space ordeal and whatever metal corpse remained of VII had surely been pulverized after the Ultron fiasco.

But what about V? Bruce wasn’t very well versed in Tony’s suit collection. He had no idea whether V had been a failed prototype or whether Tony had trashed it in the past or if he was maybe just now taking it out for a—

His eyes grew wider as the individual pieces clicked neatly into place.

No one at home.

Lights on.

One suit missing.

“Sokovia,” Bruce muttered out loud, and in their silence Tony’s steel wardens confirmed their agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone still with us? Are we just broadcasting into the ether? Give us a sign of life if you are. The deadly silence is creepy.


	27. Chapter 27

The journey home and the subsequent two days of preparation were nerve-wracking. He felt like he was on the clock, like someone had started an invisible countdown and he was racing against time to ward off a disaster the size of an angry Gold Coast hurricane. The TV, locked in on CNN, ran continuously in the background. Sometimes just before the big bang, people could feel its advent. Some felt it in their bones — that old wife’s tale about a nagging ache when the weather changes — some saw foreboding omen, and some just knew.

Bruce was of the latter kind. He knew something was on the horizon the same way he’d known it was a bad idea to volunteer for Betty Ross’ father. He’d been right then and, call it a premonition, he was certain to be in the right now. The game was drawing to a close. And if he wasn’t quick to act he’d end up among the pawns on this playing field, duteously standing in line and awaiting his turn to be sacrificed.

Bruce wasn’t a hero. The line between sinner and superstar was a slim one, and too many times throughout his life people had tried to convince him he was sturdily standing on one side or the other. Ross calling him a monster, Natasha calling him their last hope, Pepper saying she wouldn’t know what to do without him while Nick Fury would know exactly where to stick him for the rest of his days.

What Bruce was really good at, however, was weighing the odds. And the odds, he thought, glancing at the novel on his bedside, really weren’t in his favor right now.

He didn’t know where Tony had gone. He had a strong suspicion, but suspicion it would remain until he had living proof. In its absence, the CNN broadcasts detailing Stark Industries’ preparations for a fundraiser tour with its route culminating in Novi Grad, Sokovia was a passable substitute.

Maybe he wouldn’t have freaked out so much if he’d actually caught hold of either Tony or Pepper, but both were conveniently avoiding his calls. His thoughts on the matter ranged across the entire spectrum, peaking in thoughts of late-night abductions and irrefutable correlations with one Winter Soldier. In truth, he was just waiting for the reporter on show to flash the newest headline.

_This one’s right off the printer, folks. Tony Stark and Virginia Potts, owners of the controversial megacorp Stark Industries, have just been found dead in a river bank. But we all knew it was just a matter of time, didn’t we?_

But did they? Was there a minuscule off-chance that they’d run off with Tony’s missing Iron Man armor and eloped and dropped off the face of the earth for an unlikely happy ending? Or was Bruce Banner the next on the assassin’s kill list?

The doorbell rang so loudly, it almost caused him to jump out of his skin. It was as if the sound of the bell gave a whole new life to the anteroom. He swiveled around, (GREEN) heart in his throat. As he stood there, frozen for a good thirty seconds, he imagined the possibilities of who was waiting on the other side of that door. A burglar, Fury, Thaddeus Ross, fucking Natasha Romanoff risen from her grave—

But it was none of those.

As his heart resumed its practice and he peeked through the spyhole, Bruce realized that his surprise visitor was far worse than all of the above together.

He unlatched the chain, opened the door, and in no less bewilderment, stared at the broad-shouldered man in the foyer.

“What the _fuck_?”

* * *

"I'm not going back," Bruce declared after his heart rate stopped threatening to take out half the building. "And you shouldn't try to make me."

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Steve said, oblivious to all of this.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Bruce countered as he placed a cup of tea on the dinner table. He did this very cautiously, the way you would put a bowl of water before a stray dog, wondering whether in the next moment it would jump at you and bite.

Although it was debatable who was the dangerous stray here.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that under the skin of a scrawny (well, not so scrawny any more) middle-aged physicist more dangerous things lurked.

Sometimes it was quite hard to keep these things where they belonged; shut far far away.

“Are you okay now?” Steve asked and this time his voice held genuine alarm. Clearly he hadn’t counted on Bruce’s state of mind being so vulnerable.

“I’m alright,” Bruce said, sipping mechanically at his own warm milk. He had added a touch of honey to it. He hadn’t been in any real danger of turning, but the Other Guy was getting restless… and he sure as hell wouldn’t keep count on warm milk and honey if things got more precarious in the future.

“You had me scared there for a second,” Steve admitted.

Good, Bruce thought but asked instead, “Why are you here, Steve? And why now?” As coincidences went, this one seemed deliciously auspicious. Like the out he hadn't realised he'd been praying for.

Steve was quick to deliver insight, like he’d been waiting for this punch-line ever since the idea of home invasion had formed in his mind.

“I came to ask you a question.”

“Well,” Bruce said wearily, motioning with his hand, “Why don’t you ask away then?”

“Is this place bugged?”

“Is that the question? Yeah. Probably. Why?”

Steve looked about the room as though by some supernatural power he could detect hidden intercept stations. Maybe he could. Who knew? Steve sighed. He seemed to decide that, bugs or not, he would go ahead anyway.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. Not any more.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Who listens. They’ll know by now, I suppose.”

Bruce stopped sipping his milk. He asked very carefully, “What have you done, Steve?”

Steve smiled. It was sombre… maybe a little sad. It stirred an unease in Bruce, like the faint vestiges of a nightmare recalled from childhood.

“I’ve done the right thing,” Steve said. “And I’ve come to ask you to do the same.”

* * *

By the time Steve had finished explaining what amounted to a series of half-uncovered clues and quite a few more leaps of faith, Bruce was tempted to come to his senses. But to what? From here to running seemed like the only way forward. The role of fugitive was a well-trodden path for him.

“And you’re sure about this?” Steve asked. “No backing out?”

“We should finish what we started,” Bruce said simply and Steve was good enough not to push. Easier to just let him assume that this was like last time, that things with Tony had just gotten too much. If he said the truth out loud, that he was worried for Tony, that the witch hunt for the Winter Soldier and the search for JARVIS’ remnants were overlapping and the three of them might not be the only players on the field, Steve might hesitate. And what Bruce needed now more than anything else was a way out of the country. And Steve, The Man With A Plan, wasn’t picking holes in arguments at all, wasn’t challenging Bruce’s instant availability to jump straight back into his Boy’s Own adventure.

And so he went, small rucksack of essentials in hand, closing the door on another apartment with a surprising lack of guilt.

* * *

The landscape passed by in shifting black shapes, dimly illuminated by the car’s headlights. Then and now oncoming traffic would blind them in the darkness, but there were few people on the road at 4:23 in the morning. And even for those, Bruce doubted that the reason for travel was any more dubious than shift work or late-night engagements.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses and blinked for a moment at Steve, who sat imperturbable behind the steering wheel with his back straight and his priorities straighter.

Over the course of the last one and a half days a remarkable series of emotions had lensed through him, like cloud formations on an unsettled, windy day: self-doubt, shame, anger, fear and finally deep-seated irritation.

He realized that despite showing up in his kitchen and giving his most rousing speech, Steve quite clearly had no grander plans for their undertaking than omitting the freeway and driving so far under the speed limit that any cop would stop them for looking suspicious.

They pulled up in a Spokane suburb a little past 6AM. Steve navigated the neatly tended streets as though he was driving the route every day before and after work. He parked the car on a stretch along white picket-fence, where trim little houses with trim little lawns stood shoulder to shoulder. Here a sprinkler did its morning duty, there a dog barked as the newsboy delivered the daily paper.

Bruce hoped as all hell that this wasn’t their final destination; if so, it was terribly bad timing on Steve’s part. They were strangers, and there was no better time to pick out a car that wasn’t part of the usual view than early mornings. Nothing was more dangerous than a housewife with thirty years of curtain twitching under her belt and a deeply ingrained mistrust of anything veering from status quo.

“Steve,” he said cautiously. “What are we doing here?”

“We’re laying low. Just for a day or two until we figure things out.I know a guy.”

“You trust him?”

The fact that Steve seemed to have to consider this was unsettling enough. The way he just nodded his head confirmed as much. They were winging it at the expense of dozens of innocent civilians.

“Steve, I can’t stay here.”

Steve looked at him, uncomprehending. Then his mouth formed into a small little ‘o’ and Bruce could see in real time how the vision of the Hulk playing Frisbee with the neighbor’s dog played behind his eyes. Foresight had never really been Captain America’s strong suit, it seemed.

“It’ll be quick,” he said. “I just have to make a couple of calls and then we ca—”

“Condemn your guy to death? Once SHIELD finds out we’ve been here, they’ll come for him.” In afterthought he asked, “You know that, right?”

“I suppose,” Steve said, mulled it over and sealed the fate of the poor guy living on 34 Winchester Lane.

* * *

Samuel Wilson was the kind of military Bruce didn’t mind: he was retired. After having served two tours in Afghanistan and coming back in one piece (unlike many of his fellow soldiers), it had been the Chit war to really do him in. Apparently that was also where he’d met Steve. Neither of them went into the details of how their friendship had formed. Somewhere on the front-line, killing and trying not to be killed in return.

“Milk in your tea, doc?”

“Just a splash, thank you.”

Bruce watched Sam Wilson wheel over with the tray in on his lap. He was paralyzed from the waist down. During the war he’d piloted a set of metal wings built on Chitauri tech in which he’d plummeted fifty feet to the ground, no stress breaker. He was lucky to be alive.

Sam served them, then took a drink of his own. OJ. “You had a good drive here? Not too much traffic, was there?”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Listen, Mr Wilson—”

“Sam.”

“—Sam, then. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but the less you know, the less danger you’re in.” He glanced sidelong at Steve and if his next words didn’t communicate his opinion, his glare surely did. “It’s a risk us coming here at all.”

“I appreciate the concern, doc, and I know the dangers,” Sam said, holding up his hands. “But I don’t think there’s a lot of other places you can turn to. I can’t do much, I’m aware of that too, but I can help keep them off your trail.”

“Them?” Bruce asked.

“SHIELD, of course. Cap brought me into the loop about it, didn’t you?”

Steve turned an unbecoming shade of embarrassed. He mumbled something along the lines of yes-maybe and sipped at his lemon water.

Bruce gave him a disbelieving look. “About… everything?”

Sam shrugged, then smiled.

“Wouldn’t know if he left something out. But I trust him. Now, what can I do to help?”

* * *

“And you think this will work?”

Steve was standing behind him, a mix of exasperation and wild hope playing for keeps on his face. Bruce had been right in his earlier assumption that Captain America lacked a grander view of things. There seemed, indeed, to be no further plan of action from here on out. Maybe that was why Steve had recruited him in the first place. After all, he was the one sitting on all the information.

“I don’t know,” he said distractedly and kept typing.

He was by all means no Tony Stark, and he’d stopped deceiving himself that SHIELD wasn’t going to latch on to his every track like a stubborn pest; but if this worked, then it would be him laughing at Nick Fury’s expense for once and not the other way around.

They couldn’t grow roots here, that was a given. As hospitable as Steve’s friend was, the longer they stayed, the more they endangered him. And if SHIELD sent the big guns — which, Bruce thought, they ought to do on a manhunt for Captain America and the Hulk — more was at risk than just disturbing the peace and quiet of Winchester Lane.

He looked up from the laptop screen briefly to see Sam wheel into the room. He had a duffel on his lap which he now deposited on the couch.

“I still have some stuff from my active days you can take. Not a lot, granted — they had me trade in all the cool Chit arsenal for the Honorable on my discharge certificate — but whatever’s left consider yours. I don’t need it anymore.”

“Thank you, Sam. You’re a good friend,” said Steve in his trademark Captain America voice. It had never bothered Bruce before — he was pretty sure Steve had used it (with success) on him in the past — but now it had lost its magic, like the time when he was seven and he’d seen the mall Santa pulling off his fake beard. He tried not to think too much about it. They had bigger problems on their hands than analyzing the underlying vibe of Captain America’s power of persuasion.

Bruce held down the SHIFT key on his laptop and looked at the little chat window that had popped up. He started typing, fingers hesitant on the keyboard.

HELLO

And immediately felt like the world’s biggest idiot. He was wasting precious time. Fury would locate his position any minute now. Troops would be deployed before the day was over.

Still, maybe it would work.

“I thought you didn’t want to pull more people in,” Steve said, having resumed his stance of breathing down Bruce’s neck. “You never mentioned this guy. Who’s he?”

“Someone I met,” Bruce said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “While travelling.”

“And you trust him?”

“I think our interests align sufficiently.”

This seemed to hit Steve in the wrong spot. He grimaced, cleared his throat and looked away like a little boy who had just been caught in a white lie. “But you’re not worried for him like I’m supposed to be for Sam?”

“No,” Bruce said and it was really what he thought. “Not for this guy.”

He looked back at the screen. The little white line trailing his one-word text had dropped to a new paragraph. Someone had answered. Steve leaned forward, propping his hands on the table. He squinted a little, and Bruce couldn’t help the image of Captain America suffering from farsightedness. It was a refreshingly innocent thought.

“It’s an address,” Steve assessed. He straightened back up, furrowed a brow and looked questioningly at Bruce. “Who on Earth do you know in Novi Grad, Sokovia?”


	28. Chapter 28

Clint leaned against the hood of the Silverado, stretching his back. The worst part about road trips was sitting there all crammed into one position for hours, doing nothing and getting all sore from it to boot.

He remembered a time — back when him and Laura hadn’t been untying the knot in court — when they’d taken the kids down to Disneyland, Florida. Granted, originality had never been Laura’s strong suit.

He’d wanted to fly, nevermind the additional expense. With a toddler like Lila who’d been training her lungs from a young age a drive across half the country was the equivalent of subjecting yourself to interrogative torture. Clint hadn’t known what would happen first, him going deaf or his daughter finding another way to express her disapproval with the world.

But anyway, Laura wouldn’t have it. She’d done the road trip as a kid and had some rose tinted family memory bullshit that they all had to live up to. Woe be him to deprive their children of the same experience. 

So Clint had used up some of his vacation time, packed the Prius full of Huggies and Peter Rabbit baby food and the happy family had set out to meet Mickey and his goons. Back in the day before hammers and shields and alien invasions it hadn’t been a hassle to take a day or two off. You filled out a form and dropped it on Maria Hill’s desk and that was about the worst of bureaucracy.

Besides, back in the day Nat used to cover for him whenever he needed a family day. Laura found this very accommodating up until the point where she realized that Nat was covering a lot more than only her husband’s off days.

But that didn’t come until years later; the only one who’d slept between them at the Disneyland resort had been Lila, who wouldn’t be silenced unless perpetually in her mother’s arms.

Clint had gone on all the rides with Cooper — Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, Tom Sawyer’s Pirate Lair — and bought him so much candy floss that Laura wouldn’t shut up about future dentist’s visits and how he ought to ask whether dental work was even included in the health plan SHIELD had him on. Even back in what Clint had come to call their Rollercoaster Years — the time where he’d been frustrated, but not enough to think about either the C(heating) or the D(ivorce) word — Laura always found something to harangue him about. With her, no subject ever seemed to be completely closed. Her speculations and suppositions were as endless as the audio loop in A Small World.

All in all, the trip had been a success though. Cooper would talk about nothing else but meeting Pluto and Goofy for the next six months and Lila was tired out enough that she slept right through the journey home.

He reached for his pocket now, pulling out the battered pack of Camels. He lit one up and took a sweet drag. Laura had hated that too, kept telling him he needn’t think of kissing her before he downed a bottle of mouthwash first.

Nat had been different. They’d clicked right off from the get-go, even though the get-go had consisted of them being on different sides of the old capture-the-flag game. Somehow, that had drawn him to her even more. When he’d brought her in, alive and willing to defect instead of dead in a body bag like the mission roster demanded, Maria Hill only rolled her eyes and said next time they’d send a woman on a job like this. Had he made the judgment call with his dick instead of his brain? Maybe, but he didn’t regret it.

Natasha hadn’t broken up his marriage. He knew he was never going to jump from a white picket fence with one woman to the same with her. He wasn’t an idiot. He’d known what he was getting into with her, what she was and what she wasn’t. All Natasha had done was make him realize how stifled he’d been with Laura. Him and Nat, they’d been an unbeatable team, both on the job and off it. They were cut from the same cloth.

But then he’d gone and broken his leg like a clown and Fury had taken him off the active roster just as that liability Banner had come running in with his glasses all steamed up, blabbering on about Tony Stark and missions to space. Nat volunteered off the bat, an action Clint failed to understand and condemned to this day, not buying into her obviously bullshit excuse, yet unable to get the truth out of her all the same.

Still, he‘d never believed for a second that she wouldn’t come back.

Reading the mission report had been like a kick to the gut. He’d refused to believe a sentence of it until SHIELD towed that hulk of a ship in. Fury had let him be on the first recon team, hobbling his way through Chit corridors with a walk-on cast. Some part of him held out hope that she might have made it, might have managed to hole up and hide somewhere. If anyone could do it, it was Natasha Romanoff.

He’d been the one to find both her and James Rhodes. They‘d been in such bad shape that he hadn’t been able to tell who was who and which parts belonged where. He’d left it to the CSI guys to figure out… and he’d never stepped foot on that ship again until Tony Stark went ahead and had his mid-life crisis on board.

Clint was almost through his second smoke when Rumlow returned. He ground the stub.

“So? He talk?”

Rumlow shook his head, leaned through the open driver’s window and fetched his bottle of Nestle. He took three huge gulps. The heat was sweltering. “Nah, long gone. Cleared out like a rat up a drainpipe.”

“He’s in a wheelchair. How far could he have gotten?”

“Far enough to spoil my day.” Rumlow wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked like a cat that had been grabbed by the collar right before nabbing a bird. He’d gone in looking for blood.

Clint shrugged, looking across the street where two SHIELD people were talking to the neighbors, and another was interrogating the old cunt that crossed the school kids at lunchtime.

They’d been tracking the guy for a week now, one Samuel T. Wilson. Picked up his scent right as he was handing the keys to his Washington flat to the neighbors, asking them to water his plants and pick up his mail. He was going to visit family across the country for a couple days. Humbug like that. Samuel T. Wilson didn’t even have any family he could think of visiting — according to SHIELD everyone up on the pedigree had croaked during the Chit war. The house in Spokane wasn’t much more than a cheap front. Samuel T. Wilson was trying to cover his dirty tracks. CSI had already called in to confirm: they’d found fingerprints of both Cap and Bruce Banner all across Samuel T. Wilson’s chinaware.

“Shower accident would have been too flashy anyway,” Clint said. “And he doesn’t strike me as someone to deep-throat his service pistol either.”

Rumlow snorted. “You read his files? Headed some Veterans group, went to church on Sundays, bought cookies off every Girl Scout knocking at his door. Not the type to put lead in his own head.”

“Nah, I suppose not. Waste of time, though. Don’t know why Hill wanted us on it. Like we were gonna catch them all play cards together, right? They’re over hills ‘n far away. The gimp’s a dead end. Rogers is dumb, but not dumb enough to leave the guy a detailed road map of where they’re headed.”

“Well, they’re not with Stark. Hill’s got him under supervision herself. He’s a goody two-shoes for once, sticks to the rules. Philandering round Europe last I heard. Betya if he saw Cap’s ugly mug he’d rip it right off his neck.”

“Would spare us the trouble.”

“Oh, can’t fool me,” Rumlow said as they climbed into the car. He turned on the engine. “You’re foaming at the mouth to get your hands on the doc. Nothing more exciting than a personal vendetta, right?”

Clint was about to reply when the phone began to buzz. He slid it unlocked. It was Maria Hill.

“Yeah… naw, made himself scarce. We’ll get him though, if— no, sure I’ll put some boys on it. Standby for data download.” He dropped the phone from his ear and watched as the progress bar filled up. Pictures, GPS coordinates, CCTV, and travel expense reports appeared on-screen.

“Huh-uh. Yeah. Alive, copy that. We’re on it,” he told Maria Hill before ending the call.

Next to him Rumlow was trying to catch a glimpse, excited. “What’s got you all Cheshire cat?”

Clint riled him, turning the phone so he couldn’t see.

“New job?” Rumlow pressed hopefully.

“New job,” Clint confirmed. “We’re to secure… an asset.”


	29. Chapter 29

He stood in front of the mirror, naked except for the towel wrapped around his middle. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Rebuilt, sure, but not improved. No million dollar man here.

He’d stripped down to the wire. The prosthetic arm lay discarded in a heap of blankets on the bed behind him. He rarely took it off these days save for essential maintenance, and that boiled down to the occasional calibration of the neural interfacing which was hardly worth a mention. In other words, he’d gotten used to it. Too used, maybe. Strange had done a good job adapting the stump to the interface port, at least on the second go around. But there were details not even the great neuro wizard Stephen Strange could charm away. 

It wasn’t just the arm, though. Dozens of little scars crisscrossing arms and legs, the knobbly stretch of skin over ribs that had healed crooked, the little metal halo starting to show around one dental implant he’d only needed because that bitch scurvy had gotten him bad up there in space. The most glaring issue of all was certainly the inlet housing the RT. He’d taken that out too. It wasn’t like before where he could do without the reactor for five minute tops before his heart would start to cog — he could now go forty-eight hours without as much as a hitch. He’d taken care of that little design flaw right after attending Obie’s funeral, even remembered sketching out ideas on the funeral invitation.  _ IN LOVING MEMORY _ it had read. He remembered that too.

Not that Obie had anyone to mourn him. No kids, no ex-wives, just business associates, SI staff, and golf buddies. And Tony himself, of course, who’d deluded the world into thinking he’d just lost his one and only mentor. Which, in a way, he had. Only not when they’d lowered the casket into dry Texas earth, but when Obie had straddled him on the davenport in the living room, prying the RT out of his chest with fat, greedy fingers. He’d gotten rid of that couch that same week.

There were a lot of things he could blame on Obadiah Stane, but the current state of affairs… not so much. Truth was, he was in a hole. A really deep hole. 

Maybe this was supposed to be the eye-opening moment people talked about just before they got their lives sorted out. You soak in self-pity, and then there’s that revelatory hallelujah moment, church bells and all, on the heels of which you commit to the New You, like the blurb on the back of a self-help book. Lord grant me the serenity and all that bull.

Tony didn’t really believe in the concept of letting go and moving on, but he’d reached a point where the rot was becoming impossible to ignore. He wasn’t just having a bad day, or a bad month, or even a bad year. He was sort of having a bad life.

Pepper had moved out. She wasn’t calling it that, but he knew a lie when he saw one. The polite evasiveness was worse than if she’d just outright called him a piece of shit. She was  _ managing _ him. But it didn’t change the fact that she was holding up the proverbial mirror he was now looking at, and he didn’t like what he was seeing at all. It wasn’t the scars or the fist-sized hole in his chest, or even his mangled left arm. 

The longer he looked, the more he could see the resemblance.

Howard Stark’s son down to a T.

It would have been better if she hadn’t told him about the baby. Part of him still hated Pep for getting rid of it, although he couldn’t blame her. But it was the same part that wanted to score off Howard every chance he got, really rub his dead nose in it. Hardly a healthy reason to want a kid though, was it? To prove to your dad that you could do better? So there went the vengeful anger towards his maybe-ex, back into the repression box. 

Speaking of repression, that night kept haunting him in half-remembered flashes. 

Whatever he might have failed to pick up on that evening, he hadn’t missed the way she’d hightailed it out of there like she could hardly stand to look at him. 

Tony didn’t have a great handle on where to start putting things right. Usually, by the time he realized that something was wrong, he’d already missed the turning on the highway, the big bold sign that was pointing to where he needed to be. He’d missed the signs with Obie, with the Chit, with SHIELD, with Ultron... and now with Pepper. Tony was nothing if not a seasoned expert at fiddling while Rome burned. 

Except there was one thing that he might have a chance to get right, if he could get out ahead of it. The same thing that was worth him going down past the shop and past the wine racks, placing his palm on the scanner and opening the gates to the demons that lay in wait in his Hall of Armors. 

For J.

* * *

“Morning,” he said gruffly, parked the attaché next to him on the backseat and bent forward to press the button that controlled the partition. He wasn’t in any mood to talk, not about the weather or last night’s game or what devil had ridden him to blow the dust off Mark IV and take it on tour with him.

And he especially didn’t want any of it to get back to Pepper.

It was perfectly simple. She didn’t need to know. Not all secrets were bad secrets. He wasn’t sure if he really believed that himself, but he’d also discovered something which was tremendously liberating: he didn’t care. He was so very tired of having to continuously tiptoe everywhere he went, mulling over everything he did before doing it. He was also tired of being terrified like a man under sentence, seeing ruin come from four dozen different directions… and late at night alone in bed, seeing it from four dozen different directions at once.

For a while he just sat there, all cramped up in the otherwise commodious limo, tapping his forefinger against Mark IV’s transport case. He didn’t want to put it on, but he was also sensible enough to know he might  _ have _ to. The question was if he could… but even as he thought it, he dismissed the doubt. Of course he could. He was suffering from PTSD or shell shock or whatever the shrinks liked to call it, but if push came to shove it would be as easy as riding a bike. It hadn’t been any different with War Machine, had it? And this time around there wouldn’t be a corpse to haul out of the suit first, either.

There was a rattle and whir, and he took his eyes off the road to watch the partition slowly lower down.

“Where’s the fire?” he asked. That partition was supposed to stay up if he put it up and the only exception Happy could lower it for was if they ran into trouble. “Tell me it’s not the paps.”

The last thing he needed was a bunch of telephoto lenses shoved down his throat on the way to the airstrip. The Sokovia gig had already sparked controversial reception among the focus groups. If the media was there to cover his departure they’d have nothing good to say about him. And he could really do without that headache.

“Nuh, we’re all clear,” Happy said from up front, but Tony knew from the way he looked into the rearview that they were a long way from all clear.

He’d always valued Harold Hogan’s loyalty. He struck Tony as someone raised to believe that what a man doesn’t choose to talk about is no one’s business but his own, and that had sat just splendidly with him. Hogan had never dropped a line about Afghanistan and he’d kept the questions about space sprightly and to a minimum. What it was like to piss in zero-G, if aliens had cocks, and whatever he’d done to pass the time. Harmless stuff.

“What then?” Tony said, realizing he’d gone from tapping his finger against the suitcase to grabbing its handle.

Happy looked into the rearview some more, like he was supposed to give a talk in front of class and didn’t know how to start. 

“I know it ain’t my place,” Happy was saying, ”and I don’t want you to think I’m sticking my nose in. But I’ve been working for you a long time and, well, I don’t think anyone else is gonna say it.”

Tony didn’t like where this was going, was suddenly wishing Happy would have just started about the Steelers’ comedown last night, talk his ears off about the NFL. He nodded anyway. There seemed to be no way around it but through.

“I dunno what’s goin on between you two, but she’ll leave if you keep givin her a hard time, boss. And she’s the sort of girl who won’t turn back.”

“It’s complicated,” Tony said and it shot out of him like a Not Guilty plea, a fraction too quickly.

“Those things always are. I’m just sayin don’t do somethin’ you’ll regret. Girls like her, they only come along once a lifetime.”

It wasn’t like he didn’t know that, like he didn’t value her or something. He loved her. She’d gone above and beyond for him, no question. She was the reason he’d kept his head in the game in space, and she was certainly the reason he hadn’t gone and put a gun in his mouth during that horrible first year of convalescence. God knew he’d played with the idea, and not just once.

And what was he giving her in return? A hard time. Hard enough for the chauffeur to pick up on. If that didn’t deserve a medal, he didn’t know what did. 

_ Top-notch, champ. You’re a real player. Keep it up. _

“Hap?”

“Yeah, boss?”

“I’ll pull up the partition now.”

“Sure thing, boss. You do that.”


	30. Chapter 30

“...and interestingly, the fact that the Soviet Union later transitioned to automatic couplings on trains actually meant that the SA3 model of rolling stock coupling was more advanced than its US counterpart. Same with the brakes. The ones used in the USSR rail network were air brakes that allowed for a gradual release of the braking effort, whereas in the US…”

“Bruce?”

“Hm?”

“Please stop.”

Bruce blinked, swung his legs over the side of the bunk and looked out of the window where Sokovia 004K Odessa to Novigrad (the scaled down sister model of the Rossiya 002M firmeny which ran from Moscow to Vladivostok) carried them across the barren steppe. He sighed, a sigh filled with exhaustion and a yearning for past times. Better times.

Steve was perched by the window, watching the landscape roll by. He was scratching at four days worth of beard that was annoyingly fetching compared to the mess of greying stubble that Bruce was sprouting. While he looked every inch the 'middle aged man in over his head trying to outrun a sinister government agency with international reach', Steve gave the charming impression of a rugged backpacker exploring Eastern Europe on a casual jaunt.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate learning the entire history of Soviet era locomotive travel,” Steve said in a tone which made it fairly clear that he did not appreciate it at all, “but it feels like you’re avoiding the subject.”

Bruce was silent. There was no use in denying it. They’d been crossing half the globe for the past week and Bruce had breached every topic from politics to religion in order to avoid the one subject which had landed them in all this trouble in the first place.

“Ms Potts broke into my apartment. Did you know that?”

That made Bruce sit up straighter, take notice. “Huh? Pepper Potts? When?”

“A couple weeks ago,” Steve said, waving his hand in vague recollection. “Maybe three or four.”

“What did she want?” Bruce asked, but it was merely for show. He’d done the calculations in his head and suddenly had no doubts about what Pepper had wanted from Steve Rogers. The timing was too particular to be coincidental. Still, he was surprised. He’d never exactly pegged her for a princess in a tower but she was continuously surpassing his expectations concerning proactive conduct.

There was also a certain amount of envy involved. Envy at the fact that he, Bruce, had been living with a chronic paranoia of being found out by SHIELD while Pepper, once inducted into the tabooed themes of the agency’s shadowy past (and possibly present) had the bulletproof confidence to carry out her own investigations on the matter.

“She wanted to know about Howard. Seemed to think I might know more than I was letting on,” Steve was saying, pulling Bruce back out of his reverie.

Well, of course she’d wanted to know about Howard, he thought. She’d just found out that he and his wife had been potentially murdered, and who better to fill her in on the killer than his erstwhile best friend?

The only detail Pepper Potts had lacked in her research was that Steve would have absolutely no idea what she was talking about — he couldn’t know about James Barnes’ involvement in the Starks’ murder. With the ship and SHIELD and the detention, Bruce had never actually found the time to tell him. 

He decided to inch his way forward carefully.

“What did she say?”

“Said you’d filled her in.” Suddenly, Steve looked at him accusingly, his eyes sharp and a little hurt. “I thought I’d been clear enough, telling you that in confidence.“

“Steve, wait. What are you talking about?”

On top of accusation, a trifle annoyance now mixed into Steve’s expression. “I’m talking about what I told you that night before we reached Moscow. About Howard and I. What you passed on to Ms Potts.”

A deflated exhale came out of Bruce’s lungs, like air leaving a balloon. Then he laughed. “I didn’t tell her any of that.”

He called up the memory of his appointment with Pepper and tried to imagine her perplexed reaction to that kind of news. She certainly wouldn’t have tracked down Steve Rogers to gain certainty on it though, no. He looked back up at his traveling companion, now curious. “Wait, she shows up at your place, unannounced, and you… you just confessed to her that you had an affair with Tony Stark’s father? Was that what you did?”

Steve turned red. “Why else would she be going all girl detective in my apartment?”

“Because of your friend. James Barnes.” He held up a hand before Steve could get the wrong end of the stick again. “I had to tell her what I found after you left Russia. That’s why I flew back. I wanted to bring you into the loop too, but then Nick Fury stuck a spoke in my wheel. And, well, we all know how that turned out.”

“Jesus, Bruce. Just spit it out.”

“Howard and Maria Stark were murdered. By the Winter Soldier. That’s what I told Pepper. I have— or I had, proof. Those files, once I decoded them, had all kinds of hits on them. Dates, targets, mission reports. I wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t sure.”

There was a long, pregnant silence. Steve started to say something, shook his head, then stopped and sat back down by the window. The tension left his face and he looked lost for a moment, younger somehow. Marrying up the image of his best friend killing his one-time lover wouldn’t be a straightforward nod-and-accept affair. The ashen look on Steve’s face gave away more than Bruce was comfortable knowing.

Steve stared out of the window for a very long time. Bruce laid back down on his bunk. The rhythmic sound of train wheels on track turned from lulling to obtrusive. For the first time since their journey started, his heightened anxiety was replaced with a tired, crushing sadness.

After a while Steve spoke again, very softly.

“You were saying about the railways?”

* * *

The place wasn't exactly a tourist hotspot but they were dressed to blend in with the locals. Well, except for Steve’s shield, that was. He'd refused to ditch or stash it despite Bruce pleading with him that it would make them both stick out like a sore thumb, so they'd draped it in a layer of tarp and hoped people wouldn't look too closely into why he was carting around a giant disc bigger than his entire midsection.

It turned out though that there were far more conspicuous things happening than two American tourists with outsized luggage.

STARK INDUSTRIES CHARITY GALA read the massive billboard on the side of the city hall, proclaiming an event which was apparently scheduled a week from now. “ХУЙ В РОТ” said the helpful local addendum in black spray paint, apparently a sentiment which transcended languages and cultures.

Steve nodded to the offending advertisement. “What are the odds?” he said and when Bruce didn’t immediately opine, he added indignantly, “You knew about this?”

“Vaguely,” said Bruce.

He’d been aware of an impending PR-driven charity crusade through Sokovia, but he hadn’t known the details. Or the exceptionally inconvenient timing. He wondered whether Tony was using this as a decoy to try and recover JARVIS from some hacker’s basement in God-knows-where. He also decided not to mention this little detail to Steve. Not yet at least.

“Well I didn’t pack my tux, so we should be good to avoid him,” Steve said, turning away from the billboard, changing subject. “You said we’re meeting this guy downtown?”

“Him or one of his contacts. I’m not completely sure, but yes. It’s a cafe. I’ve been there before.”

“And what are the chances that he’d send a welcoming committee?” Steve asked, nodding towards a crowd to their left. Bruce wasn’t sure exactly what had tipped Steve off - maybe the shades (Ray Bans)or the backpack (Hollister) - but there was something decidedly non-Sokovian about him. When the wind caught the edge of his jacket, the barrel of a handgun peeked through.

In Bruce’s experience of Europe, people didn't usually walk around concealed carrying.

He scanned the area for other potential foes. A man lingered too long outside a florist’s, glancing at them sidelong. Could his bulky coat be camouflaging another weapon? Or maybe it was the man loitering outside the betting shop, a cigarette in his hand that was mostly for show. Was his satchel full of vodka and unlucky betting slips… or more?

And what about the woman up ahead? The normal thing to be pulling out of her handbag would have been a camera to record her visit to this backwoods shrine for posterity, but it wasn’t the flash button she was searching for. Her thumb was resting on the hammer of a gun.

Enough time with Natasha should have taught him that the dangerous ones weren't always male.

“Stay calm and don't make it obvious,” Steve whispered.

“I’d rather we don’t cause a scene.” The last thing they needed was local TV coverage of Captain America and the Hulk showing up for an autograph session in Eastern Europe.

Steve borrowed the map and clearly wasn’t happy with what he was seeing. No surprise there. The old town was a maze of tiny back-streets stuffed to the brim with civilians. This was not a place for a potential firefight.

“Come on. This way.” He grabbed Bruce by the arm and abruptly steered him towards the nearest alleyway. “Walk faster. Red beret,” he muttered under his breath, and out of his peripheral vision Bruce caught a glance of the aforementioned hat and the woman wearing it. She also wore a gun, not even bothering to conceal it.

“Okay, scratch that,” Steve suddenly said. “Don’t walk. Run.”

Which was all well and good, but Steve was an enhanced super soldier and Bruce was in his late forties and out of shape. “Go, go,” Steve urged, practically shoving him ahead.

And just in time.

Glass broke. Somebody screamed in the distance as the first shots were fired. Bruce wanted to stop, but they couldn't spare the time to stop and check for collateral casualties. All he could think was that he was slowing them down, he was slowing them down, and if he got shot it would be game over for the entire downtown quarter of Novi Grad.

“Move, come on,” Steve was muttering, keeping up a rear shield as they stumbled their way down the narrow alleyway. Bruce inhaled sharply as he spotted another two agents up ahead. He recognized the SHIELD logo immediately.

They were corralled in. There wasn't so much as a fire escape. Then Steve slung his shield across his back and made a running leap for the nearest ledge, pulling himself up by his fingertips and heaving himself onto the veranda of a nearby apartment. A bullet whizzed past Bruce’s cheek and his stomach bottomed out, a sudden fear that he was about to be ditched. But then Steve’s hand appeared and Bruce grabbed for it, being hauled up effortlessly. The panic abated, albeit only momentarily.

Steve broke the glass door leading into the apartment and they broke into the floral carpeted sitting room of a middle aged woman who unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse which was so spectacular as to be almost mesmerizing. Steve dragged him out of a pile of broken glass and dodged a plaster of paris statue of the Virgin Mary that was launched squarely at his head. They made a break through the front door before more furniture could be launched.

Getting to the roof seemed like a good idea at first, but turned out to be a dead-end. Steve might be able to pull off the twenty foot leap to the neighboring building, but Bruce attempting the same would mean a five story drop and carnage of a green variety.

Behind them the screams and shouts of the lady continued, joined in rising volume by her up-floor neighbors. The fire door burst open with three of their four pursuers. Bruce didn’t know whether number four was still in the coming or had fallen victim to some territorial apartment owner, but the three guns pointing in their direction was three too many.

Taking up shelter behind Steve and his shield, Bruce hissed, “What now?”

Steve was a soldier, but he was no killer. At least not an enthusiastic one. So it was not a surprise that he decided to give his former colleagues at SHIELD a sporting chance.

“You know who I am,” Steve said. “And you know what he is. Don’t make this messy.”

“That’s all in your hands, Captain,” one of them said. “If you don’t make a fuss, we won’t either. ‘Sides, there’s two STRIKE units with your heads in their sights.” He jerked his rifle towards Bruce. “And they’ll shoot him first. That’ll be messy. Won’t it, Doc Green?”

“What do you wan—”

But Steve never had the chance to finish that sentence. A spray of blood and brains hit him straight in the face. The agent dropped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Seconds later his teammates followed in the same fashion, headshots with brutal efficiency.

A very ordinary looking man in a sou-wester emerged from behind the ajar fire door, smiling affably as though they were all very welcome to a dinner party at his home. There was a politely restrained warmth to his manner that was very much at odds with the situation at hand.

“Doctor Banner,” Helmut Zemo said with the easy familiarity of an old acquaintance, stepping over the bodies of the SHIELD agents as though they didn't exist.

“Welcome back to Sokovia. I had hoped for you to have a pleasantly uneventful journey. Perhaps I had hoped for too much.”


	31. Chapter 31

Steve followed Bruce and his as-yet-to-be-named friend through the backstreet behind the killing spot on the rooftop, where a black sedan waited for their arrival. They had left the corpses behind without as much as a second thought. Someone would take care of them, their host assured them. Steve didn’t doubt that. But that was also what worried him. Individuals who ‘took care of things’ the way this fellow implied were best avoided. Rarely did their ways align with what Steve deemed good morals.

Apart from his initial welcoming speech, the sharpshooter wasn’t very talkative. He hadn't interacted with them save for a moment where he'd clocked the shield and shook his head with a wry smile and a chuckle.

Steve kept it on his lap for the entire duration of the cab ride.

The safe house they unloaded in front of was the embodiment of every back street poker den his ma' — bless her soul — had ever warned him to steer clear of. And Steve’s comparisons derived from 1940’s Brooklyn.

The air reeked of sweat and alcohol. He counted nine men in his direct line of sight, although he had no doubt that more henchmen were waiting off-screen. He glared disapprovingly at someone in the corner who eyed them while taking a long drag of a cigarette.

“Sir. Beg your pardon, but—” he began, his patience worn thin. Secrecy games were not what he was in the mood for right now.

Their savior pressed a warm, dry hand into Steve's and shook it once. “Helmut Zemo. Dr Banner and I are old friends. We met online.”

Bruce was looking a worrying combination of scared and disapproving. Still he said, “He’s on our side, Steve. Like your friend in Washington.”

“We do share a common plight, Captain,” Zemo affirmed.

Steve frowned to himself. He understood that they were in it up to their ears, but if there was one person he thought really deserved a step for a hint about what was going on, surely it was him.

“Bruce, a word.”

But Bruce wasn’t following. He stood in his spot, wringing his hands, looking like he was suffering from the constipation of the century.

“I think that we’re being very impolite guests at the moment,” Bruce said. “I also think that it doesn’t do to be impolite in such company as we’re currently enjoying. We’ll have this conversation later, if it’s not too much trouble.” Under his breath he added, “And try not to kill anyone, please.”

“Perhaps, gentlemen,” Zemo interjected with an unfailing politeness that was at odds with the fact that Steve had just watched him execute three people in cold blood with brutal efficiency. “You are both tired from a very long journey. Your wariness is understandable. I imagine it’s what kept you alive so long. But for your own sake and mine, it would be best if you trust me on this. And if not me, then a common friend.”

“A common friend?” Steve asked.

“Of course, Captain. The one who brought us all together. Your dear Agent Romanoff.”

* * *

After dropping the bomb that was Natasha's name, Zemo had breezed past Bruce's spluttering and Steve’s digging, declaring story time over. They were politely but firmly escorted to their quarters, a basic twin room in the back of whatever establishment was serving as a front for the safehouse. The smell of chemicals wafting through the vents made him think it might be laundry and dry cleaning and he almost laughed at the cliché. He'd spent a large portion of late 2011 getting caught up on the era of old private detective movies. Well, old to everyone else. To him they'd been a marvel of cutting edge cinematic advancement and narrative daring.

As soon as the door was shut behind them, Bruce turned on his heels.

“We can talk now.”

“I’ll be blunt then,” Steve said. “I don’t like your friend. With friends like that, you’re better off on your own.”

“Thanks for the after school special, Steve,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him… but in light of it all, he’s our best bet. And he knew Nat.”

“Natasha ran in a lot of different circles. I wouldn’t take that as a vote of confidence. This guy, he’s obviously ex-military—”

“Former Sokovian Intelligence,” Bruce clarified. “And not on good terms with SHIELD.”

“The enemy of your enemy is rarely your friend. Believe me. That’s not how it works. We should figure out how to get—”

But Bruce cut him off again. “Let me finish, please. I’m not an idiot, alright? I know I’m playing with fire bringing Zemo in, but — let’s be honest — it beats everything you’ve come up with so far. SHIELD has us in a corner. How long do you really think we can stay out of trouble before they’ll get us? Pardon my frankness, Steve, but I have far more experience with people wanting my head than you give me credit for. We need this guy’s protection and the breathing room that goes with it. I do. If I don’t get a break from the adrenaline rush soon, I’m running the risk of losing control. It only takes a moment. Just a moment and then whatever problems you think we have now...” Bruce didn’t need to finish that sentence. “Do you understand?”

Steve understood. And it was enough to make him shut up. He realized what Bruce was trying to tell him between the lines. This wasn’t about SHIELD, or Zemo, or them. It was about the collateral. Countless innocent lives. He thought back to Santa Monica, the last time the Hulk had been consciously deployed. The mission had been a success, but at what cost? It had taken six weeks to corral the beast, a non-stop drive hunt to tire him out enough for the transformation to reverse. What chance, if any, would Steve stand in a one-on-one with Bruce’s alter ego if it came down to it?

“Listen, I’m sorry,” Bruce said, taking off his glasses and placing them on the coffee table. He exhaled deeply. “I’m a little on edge. Things have been… touchy, even before you showed up. It’s getting to me, I suppose.”

On the hoof he asked, “Tony?”

“The overall situation. But him, too, yes. It’s not been—”

A knock at the door killed whatever recriminations, fair or not, were on Bruce’s lips. A moment later, a mop of tousled bleached hair popped around the doorframe. In came a young lanky man, early twenties, sporting a wide grin and a week’s worth of stubble. He wore a striped tracksuit and gold colored sneakers. Steve wasn’t up to date on the latest fashion, but the combination didn’t fail to catch even his eye. And not entirely in an approving way.

“You the Americans?” he asked in a heavy accent, letting himself in completely.

“I guess we are,” Steve said warily. “Whom do we owe the pleasure?”

The man put out his hand. Contrary to Zemo and the part of his fellowship they’d encountered so far, this kid had a coiled, irreverent energy about him, bouncing on his heels in a constant state of motion.

“Mr America, Dr Banner. My name is Pietro Maximoff. I will be your guide in Novi Grad.”

“Steve is fine. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Maximoff.”

“Pietro, is also fine.”

“If you don't mind my asking, when you say 'guide'...” he let the question hang. He didn't think Pietro meant they would be taking in dinner and a show.

“You guys are, how to put it… in a pile of hot shit right now. A whole mess of shit. You cannot stay here. Lucky for you, Uncle Helmut has taken a shine to you. And even more lucky for you, I'm very good at moving things.”

The colloquialisms sounded odd with his accent. Steve wondered if he'd learned English entirely from action movies.

“And where are you planning to move us to?” Bruce asked.

Pietro grinned. “Ah, I cannot tell you that, of course. The less you know, the less trouble you can get yourselves into. We leave tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Uncle Zemo would like to talk to you.”

Steve furrowed his brow. Bruce didn’t seem any the wiser either.

“Well, come on, what are you waiting for?” Pietro continued. “Time is money. No, not that.” He thought for a moment, as though mentally searching for the right idiom before it came to him. “You snooze, you lose. That's the one.”

“You want us to go now?” Bruce asked, unsure.

“Not you,” said Pietro and fixed a broad grin at Steve, all white teeth and manic eyes. 

“Just Mr America.”

* * *

“How did you get these?” Steve asked, trying and failing to hide the surprise, the straight-up incredulity from his voice.

He leafed through the files once more. This was more than SHIELD had mustered in half a decade. And it was recent. As recent as two weeks ago if the date stamp hadn’t been faked.

Helmut Zemo smiled the smile of a man who had just dangled the carrot in front of the mule. Steve was aware of this, but at the same time he couldn’t find himself caring about being dubbed the proverbial mule either. This was closer than he’d ever been.

“He and I, we go back together a while,” Zemo said. “Not as long as you do, I imagine, but our paths have crossed. I know him as the Winter Soldier, but I believe he was going by a different name in a different time.”

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve said, trance-like, comparing the enlistment picture of a young, virtuous man about to ship off to war in 1938 to the black-and-white 9x11s depicting one the century’s most prolific assassins. There were more than seventy years between those two recordings, yet the resemblance was striking. There was little doubt. He was looking at the same man, maybe the only other man on this planet as ageless as himself.

“Where were these taken?”

“Romania. Bucharest. I can supply you with the full address, but it would be meaningless to you. He abandoned his hideout last week. Our common… acquaintance paid him an unannounced visit.”

Steve frowned. “SHIELD?”

Zemo nodded. “They were too late, of course, but the result is the same. The Winter Soldier is on his guard now. If you planned to take him by surprise, you will want to revise that plan.”

Steve didn’t have a plan, that was the thing. He’d envisioned scenarios — anything from Bucky recognizing him and slapping him on the back like the old friends they were, to Bucky not recognizing him at all because the Winter Soldier was just a lookalike, but not his long-dead childhood friend.

“You know where he is now?”

“I don’t,” Zemo said. “But I know someone who does.” He looked past Steve, and Steve turned around, following his line of sight. Outside the room Pietro Maximoff stood, working a cigarette while chatting to another man.

Steve frowned. “Him?” How could a kid who needed his mouth washed out with soap be any help in tracking down Bucky?

Zemo laughed. “Him? No, Captain. He can teach you to pick a lock and hotwire a car, but he will not bring you your lost comrade.”

“Then who?” Steve asked, frustrated.

The smile on Zemo’s face was ominous.

“Pietro has a sister. And she is… let us say… somewhat special.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, our update schedule got a bit derailed, sorry and hi!


	32. Chapter 32

“No. No, of course it’s not an issue. Don’t sweat it. Tokyo takes precedence.”

The words rolled off his tongue so easily. He was relieved that she was a voice call away and not standing in the same room as him. He doubted the carefree, no-pressure attitude would extend to his eyes. Tokyo was a bust and they both knew it. She didn’t need to be there to shake hands in person. There was nothing to shake hands about. The Japanese weren’t going to mess around with them, not now, not when SI was about to shoot itself in the foot with Tony’s performance in Sokovia.

“Huh? Uh-huh, yeah. Later tonight. At eight, I think. The big-shots. I’ll try to make a good impression.”

They were supposed to attend together, her plane landing at something short of six, him picking her up on the way. He didn’t even know whom they were going to meet. The rich and the famous, he supposed, although they couldn’t be that rich or that famous if they were still stuck in this shithole of a country. A bow tie event for the wannabe oligarchs. 

He pulled at the curtain just a little so he could sneak a peek onto the street where a sizable crowd was camping out in front of the Ritz, a good mix of media and scandalized citizens trying to poke each others’ eyes out with placards and boom microphones.

He missed Pepper, that was the truth of it. He’d walk out there and let them stone him if that was what it took to have her back in his life again. But they were long past grand gestures. Grand gestures only worked when all the drama still overlaid a solid foundation. This was going to have to be rebuilt from the ground up, each cracked and broken piece replaced with something new, one excruciating fragment at a time. 

He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t touched a drop of booze since the baby-bomb and he wanted to tell her that he was done with BARF. Had, in fact, returned the entire hardware to R&D for that Beck guy to lose sleep over. He'd even started showing up to therapy sessions. He was on the road to redemption, a steep, winding serpentine full of potholes and humps, but he was grinding through. For her.

That was what he really wanted to talk about, not whether some Tokyo outfit were going to buy half of SI for a penny to the dollar or whether this charity charade was going to impress anyone but the gossip rags (and let's face it, _those_ weren't going to give them an easy ride either way). 

He wanted to talk about them. The two of them. Hadn’t it been consensual, that last time? By the time she'd said 'stop', he'd already been freefalling. She hadn't accused him of anything, but the gulf that had opened up between them just as he'd thought they were coming closer together screamed volumes. 

He wasn't used to analyzing his morning afters in such lurid detail. He wondered if Pepper was the first woman he'd failed to listen to, or if there had been others whose tight smiles never reached their eyes, girls who'd jumped straight into the shower while he'd basked in his own afterglow, oblivious. 

But she was still speaking to him over the phone and he had to believe it was for more than just preventing their shared company from imploding. 

“Take care,” he said pensively as the call drew to an end. “Goodbye, Pepper. I love you.”

He realized he’d said the last bit after hanging up. He had said it automatically, out of habit. Verbal punctuation, nothing more.

But it felt good, all the same.

* * *

They'd rolled out the red carpet welcome for him. Tony was used to the display of wealth, had spent his life making an unintentional study of it. From the eccentricities of British aristocracy in their crumbling stately homes with their worn-out riding gear and darned knitwear concealing a seven-figure bank balance, to New York's equivalent, old money of Western European descent who still considered ostentatiousness to be synonymous with vulgarity. His mother had fallen into the latter category. Howard had been New Money, a self-made man, and Tony had, to her regret, inherited his sense of showmanship from his father. The people who'd come to money later in the game always knew how to spend it. Tony would take Abu Dhabi's oil tycoons over the sniffy competitive understatedness of the Marquis of Whatever-shire any day. 

Point being, it took a lot to make him raise an eyebrow for the sake of good taste. He wasn't about to start clutching his pearls over a splash of leopard print and diamanté in the decor. But the oligarchs who'd made their cash after the fall of communism just about managed to make him feel uncomfortable. 

The whole evening was a monument to opulently bad taste. So much so that he wondered if this was a set up, a way to make him look supremely awful, swanning around a marble room with a pyramid of caviar and a Kristal fountain while outside people in the city were starving. This would surely be his Marie Antoinette moment. 

Consequently, he was off his game. He couldn't work out if his attempts at restraint were coming across as rude and standoffish. If Pepper had been there, she'd have known exactly how to handle it. But she wasn't and he realized that his ability to work the room -- from a royal gala to a SHIELD helicarrier to an Afghani cave -- had been lost to him some time around year two of space isolation. 

They'd come expecting the legendary Tony Stark. His name still carried weight among those too rich to care what he'd done. For some, he'd even become a covert hero, because nothing said ‘opportunism’ like a mass economic collapse. For those who'd made their fortune off the backs of the downfall of the USSR, this was an old hat. Chaos always lines somebody's pocket. 

This wasn't a goodwill mission at all, it was a group of two bit gangsters looking to profiteer from the mess he'd made. And they expected the Merchant of Death to be on side. 

He feigned his excuses and left early, much to the rancor of his hosts. 

Besides, he had an early start ahead of him tomorrow. 

* * *

He’d expected something else. He didn’t have any clear conception of what he’d expected, only that this wasn’t it.

He rechecked the coordinates on his phone. Unless someone had bumped the satellite off its orbit, the GPS was accurate. And it pointed to here. Bumfuck-middle of nowhere.

As far as disguises went, he had to hand it to them. Definitely original. But practical? He’d have done it differently, he supposed, but he also wasn’t starting out from the same place as they did. At least he thought it was ‘they’. In all his considerations he had assumed that he was dealing with a group rather than with an individual. But would a group, most likely backed by eager sponsors, have gone about this fickle undertaking from… here? He would have set up somewhere in the city if he’d been in their position, splice into the mains for extra juice, take advantage of the relative anonymity of an urban setting.

But needs must when the Devil drives.

He craned his neck to where some old decommissioned Beta-M generators lined up like a string of Christmas lights behind the main building. While the originals barely powered a light bulb, these exemplars had been upgraded into thermoelectric roid monsters. 

They would power an offline version of Jarvis was what he was trying to say. 

Whether that effort was worth the strontium leak those old Soviet dinosaurs were prone to was open for debate. Tony was J’s biggest supporter, no question, but even he was a little queasy at the prospect of turning himself into a human night lamp just for the cause.

He gripped the case a little tighter. To the ignorant bystander he looked like an encyclopedia salesman from days gone by. Although hadn't the old Britannica made a comeback after he'd unceremoniously broken the Internet? Paper and ink was back in fashion now.

The failing print industry could thank him, at least. 

He hoped he wouldn’t need the suit, hoped that he’d lugged the case around for nothing, that come Monday morning it would be back in its place down in the Hall of Armors, neatly reassembled inside its containment unit. He’d even give it a shine before popping the glass lid back on, the way he used to back in the days before aliens and spaceships.

But something had led him to go down there — the first time alone since the sleepwalk incident — and he’d gone for Mark IV like a drowning man for a cup of water. And since picking it up (condensed in its briefcase form, of course) he'd kept it close to hand, save for that hideous fundraiser where he'd been picturing it lying in the Ritz’s presidential the whole time. 

He took a deep breath and almost knocked the door out of its hinges. Hundred year old country house. He wouldn’t have pegged J for cottagecore, but he doubted J had had any say on his current living arrangements. If indeed he was here.

It took a while until his knocking was answered. The desolate flooring inside did so first, announcing Tony’s host in a series of painfully sounding creaks and groans. This wasn't an aesthetic, this was destitution. 

The door opened and a skinny redhead stuck her head out. He put her at about five-two and thin as a rake. Young too. Not young enough to get in trouble if you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants, but close. She was wearing an oversized-shirt that said MAGIC IS REAL, with MAGIC and REAL conveniently stamped over her breasts. Hadn’t anyone told this girl that fairytale magic was giving Sokovia a wide berth?

“Hi,” he said casually and tried to look past her, patently obvious and also blatantly unsuccessful. He couldn’t see a thing.

“Hi,” she said back, rocking the little grey mouse impression Tony had pegged her for like a pro. She asked something in Sokovian, probably along the lines of who the fuck he was and what the fuck he wanted. Her eyes trailed to the attache in his hand and he watched her pupils blow wide like saucers. Only for an instant though. But that instant was enough.

“I take it you know who I am,” he went on in plain English. “And what I’m here for. I’d like to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

She was silent, thinking it over. He didn’t think there was a language barrier — she seemed to have understood him just fine — it was just a matter of what to make out of his request.

For a second he regretted his decision. How dumb could you be to go at something like this alone? More than likely two dozen rifles were just being loaded inside the shack, all waiting to pin their little LED crosshairs on him. Mark IV would take the brunt… but there was no chance he’d be able to put it on in time before the first lead kiss.

“You look taller on television,” was what the girl said next.

Tony blinked. Not because of the accent, which was very pronounced (and could be very sexy in combination with a boob job, he thought) but because he'd shown up expecting to barter for J's life, not to be negged by some kid barely out of her training bras. He tried to stand up straighter.

“Don’t watch TV,” he advised. “You’ll get square eyes.”

The girl nodded. “You’re here for him, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am,” Tony said, trying to sound casual despite his heart threatening to come out his nose. He nodded towards the door. “Who else is with you?”

“Noone. Just me.”

“Will you let me in then? Or do you want to do this out on the porch?”

Her hand went slowly for the door chain, then stopped, hovering. She looked at him.

“You won’t do anything to me, will you?”

“Jesus Christ, no,” he said automatically, blanching a little. “I’m not that kind of guy. What the hell did they tell you about me?”

The girl only shrugged, but that seemed to be enough. She unlatched the chain and opened the door.

“I’d know it, I guess. If you were. I could see it in your eyes.” Although she sounded grave enough, she was smiling a little. It wasn’t a warm smile. It kind of gave him the creeps to be honest.

“My brother says I have a psychic streak. It’s not strong, but it’s there.”

Oh, boy.

“You also have a name then, magic girl?” 

“Wanda,” she said, letting him in.

“Well, pleased to meet you, cookie. Now, I like my coffee black, two sugars…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meet the Scarlet Witch...


	33. Chapter 33

Bruce’s thirst for action lay far beneath Steve’s, who’d done a one-eighty in terms of eagerness ever since Zemo promised him new information on his long lost friend. If there was a catalyst to Captain America’s disposition, then it was one James Buchanan Barnes. Bruce could talk and talk about risks and hazards; once that name had dropped, all his well-meant advice fell on deaf ears.

Of course, there was a certain interest in the whole matter even Bruce couldn’t deny. How had one man weathered the better part of a century without any outward indication of senescence? Had Hydra successfully cracked Erskine’s miracle formula? And if they had, why was the Winter Soldier a singleton and not part of a bigger whole? Who was responsible for the fates of the other nameless corpses back in Kosvinsky? Was Natasha linked to every player in the game, from SHIELD to Zemo to himself? And what, if he decided to buy-in, did Tony have in store as a trump card?

The answers to all these questions, according to their obliging host, lay with Pietro Maximoff’s sister, an individual who had so far managed to stay off everyone’s radar. Much of that concealment came with Helmut Zemo’s protection, Bruce supposed, although he did wonder what the Maximoff siblings had to give up in return for that favor.

“Does he ever stop talking?” Steve muttered under his breath, head against the glass of the truck window. Bruce was jammed in the middle, while Pietro drove through roads which became more and more poorly maintained. They were headed to his sister’s, the famed oracle that threw even SHIELD for a loop.

At least they weren’t back with the cargo, which, as far as Bruce could ascertain, was full of stolen car parts. If the time he’d just spent regaling them with his various brushes with the law, Pietro was very good at automobile-related crime.

Bruce put his head in his hands. He was dehydrated, had a splitting headache, and had unwillingly calculated that Pietro used the word ‘motherfucker’ at a frequency of seven-point-four times per minute, taken as a mean over a representative sampling of a ninety-minute period.

Steve didn’t seem to be enjoying himself any more than he was. Bruce wondered how many obscenities it would take before he snapped and launched into a lecture on bad language. _Son_ , he pictured Steve’s stern Captain America tone, _you gotta clean up your act. And that potty mouth._

Despite Pietro willing and unstoppable to talk about everyone and everything, he was suspiciously reticent when it came to his sister. Apart from a first name and the information that they were twins (although Pietro was two minutes older and brandishing the fact like a personal victory) Bruce only learned that they were orphans and had grown up under Zemo’s wing. Although unfortunate, it was unsurprising news — he would bet that half of Novi Grad’s criminals had a similar background. It just remained to be seen how Wanda Maximoff fit herself into that slot.

After what passed as an eternity, they finally pulled into a gravel access road which wound through a patch of firs and underbrush, hiding a lonesome house from spying eyes.

The house had seen better days. They were in deep country here, away from even the frugal amenities of Soviet industrialism. The planking was leaky and partially loose. Windows with broken glass fronts had been taped over. Someone had dumped an assortment of trash and old decommissioned steel equipment on a bygone vegetable garden. A lonely patch of squash clung to life against the oppression of what looked like a Beta-M long past its prime.

He almost bumped his head against the dash when Pietro suddenly stood on the brakes for no reason, slowing the truck to an emergency stop. He hopped out of the car, crushed out his cigarette with his boot (where it joined others of a similar fate) and pulled a handgun from the waistband of his jeans.

Bruce and Steve exchanged concerned glances before Steve got out on his side.

“What’s going on?”

“That there,” Pietro declared, motioning with the gun to the only other car parked in front of the house. Bruce had naively assumed it belonged to his sister. On second glance he could see that was probably not the case. The vehicle, a black BMW, was too new, too clean. It stood out of the backdrop like a daisy in a dead patch of grass.

“My sister doesn’t drive,” continued Pietro before looking Steve up and down. “You’re strong, yes? Not afraid of bullets?”

Steve, bless him, was all over the situation in an instant. Bruce tried to force himself to be as tense as his companions but instead yielded to a resigned not-again deja-vu as he hovered around the bonnet of Pietro’s truck.

When the plan of action was set — a distinct disagreement between Pietro’s policy of ‘fucking up those motherfuckers’ and Steve’s approach of caution and restraint — Bruce used his possibly last moment to bail out.

“I’ll wait by the truck,” he announced. Steve only nodded, understanding of the deeper layers of his decision. Pietro didn’t take it quite as jovially.

“You a fucking coward, Banner?”

For a moment Bruce debated enlightening him but Pietro didn’t seem to make the connection between him and his alter ego, and Bruce was long out of energy to be offended by such a statement.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

* * *

He waited for Steve and Pietro to disappear around the back of the house (for reconnaissance reasons), then decided to have a closer look himself. Namely, at the suspect car. He circled it once but couldn’t make out a lot. The windows were tinted. He reached for the car door handle and was about to pull; then stopped.

Was he going to trigger the alarm? Would he dash Steve’s plan of sneaking in unnoticed if he did? But then it came to him and he laughed. Even if, what did would it matter? Steve was next to invulnerable and if this was indeed a hostile takeover, then the agents in charge ought to know who Bruce was. They wouldn’t shoot. And if they did… well, that would be their own bad luck.

He pulled at the handle and was surprised to find the vehicle unlocked. The tang of plasticizers, paint and lubricants hit his nostrils almost instantaneously, and he filed it as that typically chemical ‘new car’ smell. The interior endorsed his assumption. Spotless and devoid of personality. He reached over and inspected the glove compartment. No hidden gun or other armament. Save for the car manual (wrapped in a leather etui with the BMW logo embossed on it) there was only a folded up piece of yellow paper, the kind used for carbon copies of receipts.

Bruce took it and straightened it out. HERTZ NOVI GRAD the top of the rental agreement read. The particulars of the car matched — black sedan, fresh out of the factory, a ridiculously low mileage. A couple of crosses marked where the renter had to sign, initials sufficient apart from a full signature at the bottom.

He wasn’t sure where he stood on the idea of karma but, looking down at that ballpoint autograph, it was hard to shake the thought that the universe was playing a giant nasty prank on him.

He scrambled out of the car and threw all caution to the wayside; and beelined for the front door. Funny how that was unlocked too.

The Maximoff siblings' house was a rabbit warren. Electronics, circuit boards and complex home builds littered the floor. Bruce was overcome by an unpleasant sense of deja-vu, remembering how the house on the island had looked once Tony had let his manic streak loose.

He didn’t bother with a tour. The whole upper level was a single room, kitchen, living quarters and sleeping area in one. It was also empty. However, just ahead of him a stairwell led into the basement, and from said basement the unmistakable buzz and glow of electronics seemed to call to him like a siren song.

He had no idea where Steve and Pietro had gone off to, and it was by far too late to tuck tail now and hide in the truck… so he descended.

Halfway down the scent of strong home-brewed coffee came his way, and on its heels an unmistakably familiar voice.

“That’s cute, watching them play soldier. I can’t remember the last time I had such good entertainment. When do you think they’ll catch on?”

In answer, a female, embarrassed rather than amused. “My brother will make war games out of anything.”

“In that case, it looks like he’s found the perfect playmate.” And after a rather lengthy pause. “Why don’t you just come down, Bruce? Don’t sneak around. It’s quite rude and, frankly, unnecessary. We knew you’d come.”

He went down then. There sat Tony, clad in an ironed, navy three-piece suit that made him look crassly out of place, like a gem on a coalface. Opposite of him was a wraith of a human, long straggles of auburn hair hanging limp and unwashed around her shoulders. Her bare feet were grubby. She was wearing very little besides a baggy, faded red t-shirt from under which two pale, skinny legs protruded. Her eyes were shining with something that Bruce recognized all too well because he’d seen it in Tony and, too many times, he’d seen it in himself in the mirror. It was the softly manic appearance of obsession.

Behind them a makeshift cooling system of water-filled pipes snaking around the room. A giant cobbled together supercomputer took up most of the back wall, perpendicular to a multiscreen display jigsawed together out of old monitors.

Displayed on the screens were Steve and Pietro, in HD, infrared and full spectrum respectively. A fourth screen showed the staircase Bruce had just come down on. He could see his own backside in it.

“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to the extensive home build. Then he looked at Tony. “Is it what I think it is?”

He didn’t actually want an answer. What he wanted was to walk back out of the house, gather Steve and Pietro and tell them that this was a bust, that the three of them ought to pack up and take their business elsewhere. Nothing good would come of this, karma or not.

“I’ll give you three guesses. But knowing you, you’ll get it right the first time around.” Tony said and Bruce couldn’t help but note the tranquillity about him. Having been around Tony for the last few years — on and off — Bruce had developed a sixth sense when it came to reading the man’s moods. This one he couldn’t place; it seemed out of place where Tony was concerned. He looked briefly at the girl, but she broke eye contact as soon as he established it. She was going to keep out of this one.

Bruce turned back to Tony. “It’s JARVIS, isn’t it?”

“Yes. In a way. But also no. He’s become… more.”

Tony exchanged a glance with the girl.

“What was it you called him, cookie?”

Wanda’s eyes lit up and it made her look strangely childlike.

“Vision,” she said. “I call it the Vision.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight unplanned hiatus but we're still here, still writing and still seeing this through to the end.


	34. Chapter 34

The Maximoffs’ sitting room was a dusty relic from bygone days. There was old, patched furniture, knick knacks clearly inherited from a long dead grandparent and, dumped in the back corner, some free weights and resistance bands which must have belonged to Pietro.

Everybody was present and accounted for. Tony sat on a wooden bar stool, probably the cleanest piece of equipment in the house. Bruce and the girl were perched on a brown couch, him looking about as comfortable as an inflatable man on a bed of nails, her sitting on the edge and sipping some off-brand energy drink. Her, Steve supposed, being Wanda. They hadn’t gotten to the official introductions yet.

“You got balls, you know that?”

That was Pietro, pacing the floor in front of them. His chosen conversation partner was Tony. Accusing hand gestures were quick to follow. “You got balls coming here, brother. After everything.”

“Yeah, I got two of ‘em, just like you,” Tony said in a tone of voice which Steve knew all too well. He wasn’t intimidated or cowed. He was simply annoyed. “What’s your deal, slim shady?”

Pietro turned beet-red and launched into a fulminating argument with his sister. Steve didn’t understand much of it (the majority was held in Sokovian), but the finger pointing and random anglicisms were indicators that Pietro wasn’t very happy with the situation at hand. This went to and fro for a while before Wanda suddenly jumped to her feet and threw the empty aluminum can at her brother.

“How dare you! I did NOT sleep with him! _Pozor tebye_ , Pietro!”

Pietro turned back to Tony, murder in his eyes. “I swear, brother, if you put your dirty capitalist hands on her—”

“Then what?” Tony cut him off, now on his feet as well. “Don’t make threats you can’t keep, boy, is my advice. If I’d been after your sister’s ass, I’d had done her in the rooftop suite of the Ritz, not fuck her like a dog in the back of this pigsty.” He glanced at Wanda. “No offense, doll. But I’m already taken.”

Steve, so far hovering in the doorway, observed the bizarre tableau with awkwardness. He cleared his throat loud enough to silence the room before Pietro could launch into a counter attack. His eyes caught inevitably with Tony’s. It was the first time they’d met since the court trial.

He tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible. He genuinely wasn’t out for a fight today.

“Let’s not make this into more trouble than it already is. We want no harm, Tony.”

Tony looked enraged. “And why would you suppose I do? Why does everyone think I get a kick out of chaos and destruction? I like my peace and quiet as much as the next guy. Which I had until five minutes ago. What even are you doing here?”

“They’re running from the law,” Pietro offered. “In search of the truth.”

“Them and about half the script books back in Hollywood.” Tony snorted. “Come on, give me a break. You’re still into all those conspiracy fables? The Greeks? The Nazis? Cap’s brainwashed sandpit buddy?”

“Don’t mock, Tony,” Bruce cautioned.

Tony threw his hands up. “I’m not, God forbid. To each his own demons. In fact, I’m about done with mine for the day.” He pulled up the sleeve of his suit, where a fat Rolex dangled lazily from his wrist. 

The girl asked, “Tomorrow again, yes? You’ll come? There is much more to learn.”

“I don’t know,” Tony said. He brushed down his suit before glancing (or was that a glare?) at the newcomers. “I might skip tomorrow. I’ve got an engagement.” But what was conveyed between the lines was: Not with these two around.

Wanda simply nodded. It was hard to read her. And apparently, Steve was not the only one having trouble. By the puzzled expression on his face, not even her brother seemed to have figured out what exactly was going on between her and Tony.

“He’s not coming back tomorrow,” Pietro proclaimed. “He’s not ever coming back. What’s in your head, _sestra_? Straw?”

Wanda scowled. “Shut up, Pietro.” And to Tony, all business: “They will be gone. I will see to it.”

“Snappy, I like that,” Tony said. “Well, you’ll figure it out. You’ve come this far already. Don’t let mediocrity stop you, cookie.”

As he passed Steve on the way to the door he tipped his head and said,

“Good luck on your paper chase, bud. Don’t let reality stand in _your_ way.”

* * *

They waited until the door fell shut behind him before Pietro exclaimed, “What the fuck was that?”

But Steve didn’t listen. He got up and got going, barely hearing Bruce’s plea to stay put from behind. He was already outside, gaining on Tony who’d almost reached the sedan.

“Hey,” he called. “Wait up.”

By the time Steve reached him, Tony was as tight as a coil.

“Whatever you’ve got on your mind, Cap, I don’t want to—”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, because if he was going to start anywhere, then it had to be there.

The apology took the wind out of Tony’s sails. Whatever angry rant had been building died in this throat. He gave Steve a skeptical look, as if he didn’t trust his ears. Steve took it as leave to continue.

“I’m sorry for closing the portal. At the time I thought I was doing the right thing. Making the tough call for the greater good, you know? We all thought the nuke had blown. The chance of you surviving it, surviving out there…”

“Was absurdly low,” Tony finished for him. “I was a statistical outlier. Yes, terrible, such a shame. Shit happens, life’s a bitch and then you die, tough titty said the kitty.”

He leaned closer to Steve, conspiratorial.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, though. If it had been you through that wormhole, I wouldn’t have lost sleep about shutting the lid either.”

Steve paused. He hadn’t counted on judiciousness on Tony’s part. But he’d take what he could get, even if it was just the opportunity to pour out his woes. “I’m sorry for how badly south the rescue mission went too,” he carried on. “That I broke your arm. They said later, after we got back to Earth, that I still had a hefty dose of whatever that poisonous thing—”

“—venomous,” corrected Tony. “If it bites you and you get sick, it’s venomous. If you bite it and you get sick, it’s poisonous.”

Steve blinked, thrown. “Okay. Well the point is, I wasn’t myself.”

Tony snorted again. “God no, you were an asshole. And before you say I was ‘in a difficult mindstate’ — yeah, I read your report, by the way — I had four years of valid excuses under my belt. A little empathy would have gone a long way.”

Steve ground his teeth but trudged on. He wanted to get this off his chest. All of it.

“I regret what I said in court. SHIELD had me over a barrel. I was trying to help a friend. I thought that if I played along, did what they asked, then they would help me in turn. But the more I dug, the more I realized that they were rotten to the core. I know I’ve made some huge mistakes and I’m sorry you’ve gotten the short end of the stick from that.”

“Are you done?” Tony’s face was ice. “Are we supposed to hug it out now? Do we agree to put our past aside and work together for the greater good? Avengers, I dunno... assemble?”

“No.” Steve faltered. “But there is something bigger than both of us going on here, Tony. Something we can’t ignore.”

Tony crossed his arms. “You mean your lobotomized army buddy turned super assassin? Who just so happened to — allegedly, I might point out — kill my parents?”

Steve looked on in frank astonishment. “You know about that?”

Tony barked a laugh. “Of course I know. You think Bruce can keep a secret? So if you were planning on giving me the everyone-deserves-redemption speech, save it for someone who gets off on that shit. You want to dice with old-timey war criminals and brainwashed Russian assassins, go for it. Knock yourself out. But not me. I’ve got other fish to fry.”

“Tony,” Steve pressed. “This could be the fate of the world we’re talking about here.”

“Yeah, and that worked out so well for me the last time.”

“Hydra are the ones responsible for this. For all of this. We’ve got good reason to believe that they’re still active, still pulling the strings from somewhere behind the scenes. They’re the ones who ordered the hit on Howard and your mother—”

“Maria,” said Tony. “My mother’s name was Maria. And she died because of the mess that my old man was caught up in. If you think that I’m pulling a repeat performance on that, you’re in for a sorry surprise. I’m steering clear of your Sherlock act. I’m not making the same mistake twice. I’m better than Howard.”

It clicked, suddenly. Unlike Steve and Bruce, Tony had someone waiting for him at home. Someone who he’d be putting in harm’s way if he jumped feet first into the fray.

In a much gentler tone he asked, “Is Pepper here? I haven’t seen her around.”

“She’ll be at the event tomorrow,” Tony said, then grimaced. “Actually, can you please not make this awkward? We’ve— Pep and I— we’ve been, ah, in a tight spot lately. If you were to show up there — for whatever delusional reasons you might have — that would really put me in the dumps with her. If you’re serious about your whole coming-to-Jesus act: don’t drag me into this. Don’t drag Pepper into this. Just… stay away.” 

He nodded over Steve’s shoulder, where Pietro and Wanda were not very discreetly watching them through the window. “Have those kids make up a fire, teach them how to fry smores and be good scouts. Lord knows, that girl could use to see the outside of that cesspool more often.”

“What were you doing here, Tony?”

Tony shrugged, got into the car.

“Same as you, I suppose. Tying up loose ends.”

He pulled the door shut and drove off.


	35. Chapter 35

Seeing Tony again had shaken Bruce in a way that he thought should have been reserved for Steve. But in yet another reminder of how Steve somehow managed to do everything in his Captain America Does Better way, the two of them had gone out into the driveway, had had some man-to-man talk and then Steve had come back looking for all the world like everything was water under the bridge. They’d been too far away for Bruce to eavesdrop (although he hadn’t been trying personally, the Maximoff twins had been everything but discreet about their own attempts), but he still envied Steve for his resolve to confront Tony about their conflict.

Bruce… not so much. He and Tony had barely exchanged pleasantries. Tony didn’t want him in his business, Tony didn’t want him as a friend. That much had been painfully clear for a long time. But why couldn’t he shake the need to keep inserting himself into Tony’s life? Even now, a part of him wanted to go running after the car on an irrational hope for forgiveness. There was some analogy to be had with that. Something about scorpions and frogs, although he was losing track of which of them was which.

“That was rad, wasn’t it?” Pietro was saying. “Did you see him with his suit and the rolly and that ride? Like money was pouring out his ass! I’d love to see the look on his face when they start throwing eggs at him tomorrow.” Conspiratorially, he added in a low tone, “Tony Stark is not a hero in Sokovia.”

“Enough  Pietro,” Wanda admonished. She turned to Bruce and Steve, a small frown wrinkle on her forehead. “And you? What do you want? You heard him — out by tomorrow or he won’t come back! Why did you bring them here?”

“Uncle Helmut's orders,” Pietro said. “He wants you to help them." Bruce got the impression that the fact that this conversation was taking place in English was for their benefit. "Its tracker. You’ve cracked it by now, haven’t you?”

“Cracked what?” Bruce said, taking this as the moment to insert himself into the conversation. He’d pieced together that Wanda Maximoff was hoarding a pirated and possibly homebrewed version of JARVIS in her basement, but he was still at a loss about why Tony, who obviously knew and had in part applied himself to the cause, was letting her. Tony Stark wasn’t a man who willingly shared his toys.

“If I do this, you will go?” Wanda asked.

“We will,” assured Steve. Bruce suspected he would promise her the moon on a stick if it would get him one step closer to his friend.

Bruce cleared his throat. “What exactly is down there, Wanda? JARVIS?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “But come, I’ll show you. I’ll show you like I showed Mr Stark. You will understand then.”

* * *

If Bruce had been skeptical and somewhat repulsed by Wanda at first, by the time they were done he thought that he was, paradoxically, a little bit in love.

It wasn’t just the evidence of obsessive behavior that was apparent all over — neatly handwritten notes, tacked down memorandums, crisply aligned pens — but the more he looked, the more he felt that there was an affinity between them, something she might share with Tony, but not with her brother or Steve. 

“And it can hack into everything?” Steve looked as though he was struggling to wrap his head around it all.  


Wanda nodded. “Mr Stark helped me adjust it. He says it’s a remnant of SHIELD subroutines. Unofficial, illegal. But used all the same. We spied on Director Fury the other day. It was exciting.”

“You can access all of SHIELD’s database?” Steve asked incredulously. “No access restrictions?”

“None. I can look inside the White House too.” She paused for a second. “But that would be impolite.”

“Can you get hold of nuclear codes?” Pietro asked, his eyes wide.

Wanda smirked. “Not for you,  _ brat _ .”

“Let’s better not pursue that train of thought,” Bruce advised. Now he knew what the Maximoffs had to offer Zemo and he didn’t like it one bit. Pietro was only collateral, he’d figured that the minute they had met him, but his sister, placid as she appeared, had found Pandora’s box and peeked inside. She was clever enough not to open it up all the way, and for once he hoped Tony’s influence was doing some good, but it was only a matter of time until she would succumb to curiosity. Or until someone else would slap it out of her hands and use it for their own device.

Helmut Zemo came to mind. But even more so, Nick Fury. He couldn’t decide which of them was the worse pick.

Steve seemed benighted to all of this, blinded by his very own carrot on a stick.

“You can trace down my friend with this?”

“Sergeant James Barnes, 107th Infantry Regiment,” Wanda offered, as though she had just been waiting for it.

“You know him?” Steve asked.

“I know a lot,” Wanda said. “And you’re not the first to ask.”

Bruce frowned. “Who else?”

“Why, Mr Stark, of course. We wrote an algorithm together that will help the Vision track him down if he indeed still lives. That would make him one-hundred-one years old. One year older than you, Captain. Hopefully he held himself as well. We did factor for age related variance, of course.”

Steve was all but on top of her. “Have you ran it yet?”

“We were about to. But then you came.” She wrinkled her nose. “I told you you must leave. I was excited to see if it would work. Mr Stark said it’s like searching for a needle in a haybale—”

“—haystack—”

“Stack, then. A very big stack. We’ll do it tomorrow, I guess, or the next day. When you’re gone.”

“Why for godssake can’t you do it now?” Steve asked.

“Because I promised to wait for him. We want to go over it again, in case we missed out on something. An error in the programming would be disastrous.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Steve persisted, now impatient.

“It was bad enough to ruin my country,” Wanda answered softly. “And that was just JARVIS. The Vision is a lot more powerful. A lot more dangerous too.”

“I could have a look at it, if you want,” Bruce offered, unable to help himself. Pandora spoke to him too. “I worked with Tony before. I won’t push it if I don’t think it’s safe.”

Now there was hesitation on her part. Temptation. She exchanged a glance with her brother, but Pietro only shook his head.

“Uncle Zemo likes him,  _ sestra _ . I just don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

* * *

He had been unsure at first, unsure if her 'Vision' really lived up to the hype or not. But now, looking at what she had done he felt awe as well as fear… and a mounting sense of excitement.

Whatever this was, it was huge. Not just big, but huge.

“Shall we?” he asked.

“I still think we should wait,” Wanda said.

“Just press the fucking button already,” said Pietro.

“Langua—”

“Hey! No— wait!”

But Bruce had already done it. He’d barely registered leaning forward and reaching for the keyboard, but the moment his finger hit the ENTER key he felt an electrical shock run down his spine. It scared him to the bone… but he did it anyway, compulsively.

A thought hit him, just briefly and barely, and it disappeared even before it was wholly formed:

_ got you _

Whether that was meant to be  _ I got one over on you _ (Tony) or  _ I got your back  _ (Wanda) or  _ I got you under control _ (you know exactly who), he couldn’t tell.

Wanda slapped his hand away, following up with something decisively ungenerous in Sokovian.

But the search had been initiated. And The Vision did not disappoint.

At first old sepia pictures of James Barnes appeared on the four screens. Early childhood, family shots, school, enlistment. Various snaps during his military career, most in company of one Captain America. Steve shifted in the background.

Then press coverage, audio and video footage regurgitated on screen, ragtag datings through world history. Some Bruce recognized from the Kosvinsky files, many were new to him. The system sifted through what was viable and what not.

Another jump. Several criminal profiles popped up, were scored and assessed. Here a backward cut had been made in the 1970’s. Vision was trying to isolate the outcomes. First ten, then five, then two mugshots. UNRELIABLE DATA flashed across the screen. 

One last processing effort, then suddenly Steve shot up from his seat and said, “That’s him!”

As though it had ears (and Bruce didn’t preclude an audio linkage), Vision magnified the CCTV footage of a man and added several other, independent recordings. 

Steve was ecstatic. “That’s him. That’s Bucky!”

_ 89% PROFILE MATCH,  _ Vision reported. 

The screen blacked out. A command prompt popped up in its stead. 

Steve: “What’s happening?”

Wanda, groaning, bent over the keyboard. “This is why I wanted to wait.”

She didn’t have to input anything, though. Vision supplied itself with the code it needed, and at a pace which no human could follow.

“What is it doing?”

“Accessing. Burrowing like a mole in the ground. There is no distinction yet between ‘can’ and ‘should’.”

The command line vanished. There was a sudden but very short screen freeze, then the desktop layout changed completely. They were remote accessing.

“Damn,” Steve whispered.

Before them the familiar logo of a skull sprouting six tentacles occupied the screen. But that was not all.

“It’s accessing their database,” Bruce said. He felt like somebody had just walked over his own grave.

“There’s a lot of encryption,” Wanda said. “Better to download first, decode later. Vision can hack anywhere, but not forever. They’ll know. And they’ll know fast.”

“Terminate the session, then,” Bruce pushed, and he caught the panicked edge to his own voice.

“No, wait-- do we have everything yet?”

“Everything is too much to want. Viz, come back.”

And within a handful of seconds, it was over.

Bruce was already dreading the repercussions.

* * *

“How long will this take?”

Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The same amount, whether you pace a trench into the floor or not.” It was now the early hours of the next day. The mortals among them (read: everyone but Steve) had caught a few short hours of rest. The twins had shared the single bed in the far corner of the room, while Bruce had commandeered the sofa. Steve had been the only one not in need of, or unable to sleep.

He’d held solemn vigilance over the Vision while the rest of them had been out.

“It’s not been doing anything for hours,” Steve complained.

“It’s calculating. Just in the background. You won’t see anything until it’s done.”

“And that will be when?”

“All of it?” Bruce shrugged. “Days. Weeks. We’re just scraping the surface.”

* * *

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“Steve. You have to look at this.”

He turned around the laptop screen. Steve looked. First at the screen, then at Bruce, then back at the screen.

“Tell me this isn’t what I’m thinking it is.”

“I won’t,” Bruce said. “But we need to call Tony. Like, now.”

* * *

Wanda put the phone back in the cradle. “He won’t pick up. She neither.”

“You think they’ll take calls from an unlisted foreign number?” Pietro snorted. “Why don’t you call their American office? Make an appointment at their earliest convenience?”

“He gave me his number,” Wanda hissed. “So I can call him if something goes wrong. This,” she pointed at the room at large. “Went wrong. Very, very wrong.”

“Isn’t the party...thing today?” Bruce asked.

Pietro rolled his eyes. “It’s a ball. For the rich and filthy. So they can get richer. And filthier.”

“We need to go, then,” Steve said. “Whether that list on the computer is true or not, I won’t chance it. He’ll be there tonight. I’m sure of it.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wandavision: The Chaed and spacelaska edition.


	36. Chapter 36

“Are we ready yet?”

“Almost,” Bruce said. “There’s a  _ lot  _ of data.” With that he turned his attention back to Wanda and their undertaking. Steve let out a strained breath of air. They’d unanimously agreed that staying here and pretending that the world was carrying on as normal wouldn’t do any of them -- or the outsiders involved -- any good. 

What they’d uncovered was too precarious to go by conjectures, too sensitive to rely on the abayance of those that were after the information as well. And they’d barely even scratched the surface on that question -- what information, what data, what consequences. Bruce had said that they would need weeks. Wanda had said that the best they had was maybe a couple of days. Then at the latest, Helmut Zemo would come to exact his toll.

Steve looked at his watch. Days and weeks seemed as irrelevant as they seemed unattainable right now. What he had was hours and minutes, and both of those were ticking away while he watched Wanda and Bruce try to cram as many files as they could onto a harddrive. 

His moment was here and it would be gone again before the night was over. If he didn’t catch Bucky now he would never do it. And if he didn’t catch Bucky now he might never forgive himself for it either. For not stopping him. 

“Have you tried calling Tony again?” he asked.

Bruce shook his head. “Company mailbox. But we’re nearly there.” And to Wanda. “Your brother seems to be all set too.”

They looked at the screen displaying the front of the house where Pietro had packed their personal effects onto the load bed of the truck. There wasn’t a lot. A duffel for each of them, some assorted electronics, a crate of miscellaneous odds and ends. The Maximoffs had practiced a minimalist life. Steve suspected that this wasn’t their first experience at the up-and-go lifestyle, nor would it be their last.

Then Pietro shot down the stairs like a bullet. He looked petrified, his eyes protruding from their sockets, his mouth agape, and the cold sweat of terror clammy on his brow.

“We have a problem. We have a hell of a fucking problem.”

Steve felt the hairs on the back of his neck pop up, a fresh surge of adrenaline dumping into his veins. 

“Zemo?”

“No, brother. A much bigger problem.” He pointed to the screens. “There now, you’ll be able to see them any minute. Your friends with the sunglasses and the guns. They must have bought up all of old Michail’s car dealership.”

They watched a line of cars wind through the forest surrounding the house. Steve counted five, although he would put his hand in the fire that there were more, hidden or waiting or approaching from other directions. They’d saved on the decals, but Steve had no misgivings on the identity of their newly arrived guests.

“We need to go,” he said gravely, looking at his three companions. Then, with a flick of the hand he pulled the harddrive from its socket and put it into Wanda’s hand. “This will have to do, I’m afraid.”

Then he turned to Pietro.

“Son, get the gasoline.”

* * *

Pietro held up the match, the usual breeziness gone from his expression. Bruce supposed it wasn’t as easy to burn down your house as he wanted to let on. Next to him his sister clung to what remained of the world’s most sophisticated artificial intelligence. The rest of it would burn down to unrestorable copper and plastic melt. They were about to inter JARVIS and Ultron and Wanda’s visionary crossbreed of the two.

And Jesus Christ, it was about time to put a fucking end to it all.

“Do it,” Wanda said with tears in her eyes. “Or we’ll burn alongside it all.”

Pietro struck it, and the sulfide head of the match ignited. He threw it on the soaked rug, which caught fire immediately.

“Let’s get moving. We don’t want to be here when the flames reach the basement.”

“We don’t want to be here when those cars pull up the driveway either,  _ sestra. _ Come on.”

They went out the back. There was no use in taking Pietro’s truck. The only drivable road would be blocked by SHIELD SUV’s and the forest was too thick to maneuver the truck through it. They would be faster on foot, Pietro said. He knew the in’s and out’s of the woods. They could lose their tail in the underbrush.

“You just don’t slow us down, doc,” Pietro said to Bruce, fixing him with a pointed glare.

“I won’t,” Bruce assured, long past the point of being offended by the statement. He looked to Steve instead. “Because I’m not coming.”

Steve stared back, then off into the distance, where the SHIELD convoy was approaching. They had a couple of minutes at best. It was a no-brainer. 

“You’re sure?”

Bruce nodded.

He’d made his peace.

* * *

It was the longest three minutes of his life. 

Behind him the Maximoff cottage blazed fiercely. Every so often a blast or pop flared up the sight. By the time the trucks crunched the gravel of the porch, Wanda’s basement project was beyond salvation.

When the doors opened and Clint Barton stepped out, kitted out to the teeth, he wasn’t even surprised. He supposed it was wise never to underestimate a man’s capacity to play John Wayne.

“I’ve been itching for this, doc,” Clint said. “Vengeance and retribution and all that. Getting even, I guess. I bet I’m fast enough to blow your brains out before you start changing color.”

“A lot of people have taken that bet and lost,” Bruce pointed out. “Myself included.” 

“Don’t give a flying. If you try pulling something cute, it’ll be just like Santa Monica. We’ll tire you out in the end. Wouldn’t be the first time either.”

No, it wouldn’t. But it would be horrible, maybe even more horrible than Santa Monica had been. The Bruce of now was very different than the Bruce of then. 

That was why, when Clint Barton went for the gun, he was smiling. He had nothing left to lose. He didn’t want to get away. He didn’t think Clint did, either.

Because in the end, when you really decide to do it, it’s like falling in love ( with the same woman ). 

* * *

They ran into the forest like their lives depended on it, tripping and stumbling over things in the stifling darkness. Patches of moonlight shone through the gaps in the trees. For a while the sounds of gunshots and grenades accompanied them. Then, even those subsided.

Steve could only imagine what that meant. He had seen the look in Bruce’s eyes when they’d parted ways — and it had bothered him. Bruce was as afraid of his alter ego as everyone else. The hideous uncontrollable monster. But he hadn’t seemed daunted when he’d told Steve and the Maximoff siblings to take to the boats. Quite the opposite. And no good could come out of that.

“We can stop now,” he said eventually, and the three of them came to a halt. Pietro had one hand wrapped protectively around his sister. The other was wrapped tightly around a pistol. He was anything but persuaded by Steve’s command.

“Stop? You’re out of your mind, brother. We stop now, they’ll bring all of us out feet first.”

_ If they’re still alive, _ Steve thought. And if they were, they had bounty enough to fore-go three stragglers in the forest. For now, at least.

He nodded to Wanda. They all knew she was the precious goods in danger. “Can you get her out of here?”

Pietro looked doubtful. “Yes… but what about you? The Great American Hero? They won’t leave off your trail. And we can’t smuggle you. You stick out like shit in a stew.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Steve said. “I’ve got somewhere to be tonight. And if they follow me, all the better. I think I’d rather have an audience for this one.”

“You’ll save Stark’s girl?”

“I’ll try.” And with more desperation than hope: “Try saving my friend too.”

“I hope they won’t get you, brother. I started to like you, just a little. You’re not quite as stuck up as they made you out to be.”

He waited to see whether there would be any last words from Wanda, but the girl only looked past him, to where her life’s work was being taken apart by men with little interest in the hurt they were causing.

Eventually Pietro took her by the arm and guided her away through the underbrush. Steve didn’t have time to wonder if he’d ever see them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that was a short lived but fun team up. And on to more carnage.


	37. Chapter 37

He’d picked her up and they drove together, posing for the cameras all evening. Hands held, his arm around her waist, little cued laughs and giggles. If nothing else they were both accustomed to the limelight, gifted actors.

She wasn't sure how many more of these they were going to get away with. Nevermind the repercussions it was going to have on the press — but the lying was starting to become soul destroying. She thought of Maria Stark, who'd made a lifetime out of this kind of act. She didn’t want the same fate for herself.

But it was complicated. There was the company. The public image. Their inevitable uncoupling would have to be handled delicately, like white gloves on an old manuscript, trying to turn a page without destroying the entire book.

The event itself was spent working, talking to the right people, omitting the wrong ones. Tony’s media appearances had been scarce in the last half year, barely a step up after his complete retreat following Ultron. It was a square meal for the reporters whenever they could get him in front of a lens, or even better, a microphone. She let him intercept the press while she focused on the merger deal.

Tokyo had been a letdown, but she’d known that even before flying there. If she was honest, she’d only agreed because it would buy her time. Time to think on how best to break the news to him. She’d made up her mind.

Obligations wrapped up around midnight. Tony rematerialized at her side at around half past, looping an arm around her waist, saying he was ready to retire. They’d agreed on the timeline beforehand, so the dismayed apology she gave to Sokovia’s prime minister at having to cut short their chat was mostly feigned. In truth, she couldn’t wait to get away herself.

The drive to the hotel was long and nonverbal, a drab kind of tension between them, a thing that had become a familiar staple in this new chapter of their relationship.

Arrived, they rode up in the private elevator together, both staring straight ahead and exhausted. Shortly past the eighth floor, Tony found his voice. He cleared his throat and said, “You looked good tonight.”

She wasn't sure how to respond to the compliment. It felt civil and perfunctory and nothing like the old Tony and Pepper. She couldn't quite bring herself to voice aloud the lie that was 'you too’.

Tony wasn't looking great. Not just physically, although that was certainly obvious, more so for their prolonged periods apart. He'd put all the weight back on from the emaciated state that she'd first picked him up from in that lone SHIELD facility, but he'd never really regained his muscle tone. The resulting effect was that he was beginning to look like someone's tired old dad, with sallow skin and thread veins and middle aged spread creeping in. It was subtle, but it was just slightly less subtle every time she saw him.

“I noticed you didn't drink,” she said instead. “You should keep that up.”

_ Because I still worry about you _ , was the unspoken subtext, but it didn't need to be hammered home. If there was one thing Tony surely knew, it was that.

The elevator announced their arrival and the doors opened to the hotel’s penthouse, which contained two suites. Both were booked to warrant absolute privacy. The last thing they needed was nosy neighbors.

Tony walked her to the door on the right, 1401. She found the keycard in her purse, swiped it through the reader and waited for the mechanism to ping affirmative. She entered, stuck the card into the slot in the wall and waited for the lights to turn on. Up front the floor-to-ceiling window showed a lit backdrop of the old city with its basilica at the center. She hung the purse from the coat hook, unwrapped the cashmere shawl from around her shoulders and dropped it on the rack below.

Tony stood in the doorway as though the threshold was on fire, hands in his pockets, watching her. His was the room across the hallway. It had been one of her conditions. That they would sleep separately.

That was the worst part of it, she thought. The revulsion. She'd felt a great many things towards Tony before but revulsion was new. It was a big sign that there was no going back from this rift, the beginning of the end of the end.

“What if we just didn't?” she said suddenly, turning around, looking at his silhouette in the doorway. “What if we just didn't do this anymore? And we were honest. Would that be so bad?”

Even from a distance she could see that the request hit him like a punch to the stomach, and it didn’t help that he was struggling to maintain a blithe expression. After a moment of silence he stepped into the room and gently clicked the door shut behind him.

“Can we sit down for this?” he asked. 

She nodded, then busied herself with the in-room drinks selection. She poured herself a glass of Veen mineral water while Tony shuffled over to the lounge chairs. She listened to the leather give under his weight.

“Water?” she asked.

“No. I don’t think I could stomach it right now.” And after a moment, “Are we really there?”

Their eyes caught seriously and she thought irrevocable words were going to spill out of her and she was frightened. “Are we where?”

“At the end. It’s written all over your face, you know.” He spoke softly and soothingly, the way people speak to the hopelessly mad. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. But we had a good run, I think. It was worth coming back for… even though it didn’t last.”

She thought about the aftermath of Tony's disappearance. Sometimes it was so very easy to forget that he'd been gone. Sometimes the whole four years of his absence felt like a fugue state that she could only dimly recollect. The Pepper of then would have given anything to see him again, even if just for a moment. But the longer he'd been back, the more tangible he became and the more she took for granted the fact that he existed again in the world. And here, the Pepper of now was trying to find a way that they could see as little of each other as possible.

Love hadn't been enough. Love and perseverance and a deep rooted belief that in the end nothing could keep them apart, not even a portal between galaxies. None of it had been enough. They could blame SHIELD or Steve, or Jim for dying, but if she was being honest, it was not the part of Tony that had changed so much through it all, but the part of him which had remained unaltered that ultimately put the final nail in the coffin.

“I'm glad you came back,” she told him. “I will never not be glad you came back.”

“Yeah,” said Tony and managed a small smile. “I’m glad too.”

And just like that they ran out of what little magic there had been between them. Tony took a breath and got to his feet.

“That’s it then, I guess. I’ll see myself out the door and in the morning I’ll call PR. They’ll knock around the particulars.”

_ How about you fight for it?  _ she thought.  _ Fight for us!  _ But she only said, “Yes, I guess they will.” 

Her voice sounded as if it were coming through a big mouthful of cotton wadding. She didn’t want Tony to see her cry, didn’t want to show how much this moment hurt her. She'd always been so very punctilious about keeping things cut and dried. Not that it had ever done her much good when it came to Tony Stark.

After everything they'd been through together, it felt wrong to just draw a dispassionate line under it all and leave it to the spin doctors to sort out. She wasn't ready to hand over that last part of their narrative and let their PR team weave it all out of existence in order to replace it with something palatable and sanitized.

But if the two of them had really said everything there was left to say after all these years, she almost wished he had never heeded the impulse to come back at all. Such a weak ending to a relationship which had encompassed love, sex, friendship, concern and fear seemed to make mock of the whole thing -- the pain, the hurt, the effort.

“Well, sleep tight, sweetie,” Tony said from the doorway. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She listened to the door open and close, then went on listening to his footsteps in the hallway and eventually, to the door of room 1402, all while holding her breath like a drowning woman with the surface six inches above her head.

When she was sure he was gone, she sat on the floor, covered her face with her hands and let the tears fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, dear readers. For the festive season we bring you...some really depressing Pepperony. <3


	38. Chapter 38

That night she dreamt.

It was late September, a day of autumn breeze and drifting leaves. It was the time of the year you’d leave the house with a jacket and jersey in the morning, only to peel off the layers at midday when the sun shone hot.

She was sat on the steps leading up to Penn Museum, where Mesa Verde and Grand Gulch were waiting to inspire her for a twenty page essay on the Hazzard Hearst Collection. She’d never finished that essay — wasn’t even sure she had even started it — because when she’d finally stood up from that spot on the stairs all warmed up by the autumn sun, she hadn’t walked on into Penn.

Back in September 1993 Pepper had taken a decision that would veer her life from what she had, until that point, considered to be her perfect future. Arts and Culture would always fill her heart with joy, but unless she got exceptionally lucky and discovered the next up and coming Picasso or uncovered some lost masterpiece hidden away in someone’s dusty attic, a career in other people’s art wasn’t going to fill her wallet enough to ever move off campus.

What name could she hope to make for herself as a curator? Even the degree was a cliche, the sort of thing college girls majored in when they had no inspiration for what else to do. There wasn’t going to be a trust fund or a wealthy husband waiting for her at the end of all of this.

So she switched to International Management the next semester. By the time graduation rolled around, she’d even scored a paid apprenticeship in one of the biggest corporations state-side. The fact that they dealt in weapons and military contracts didn’t bother her in the slightest. She didn’t love it, but she’d never been a Stop-The-War placard waver either. It was good pay and filled with opportunities. Who knew, maybe she’d work herself as far as the executive floor.

Of course, that wasn’t quite how it went. It started with three years in a cramped common office where no one noticed (and much less appreciated) her overtime and extra effort. Promotion seemed as far away as the moon. But it was on one of those long Fridays that she spotted an accounting error with potentially disastrous consequences. She’d asked the CFO’s -- Obadiah Stane -- PA to pass it on. But then, not trusting that the message would land, she also arranged to bump into him in the lobby and bring it to his attention personally. 

He hadn’t seemed particularly happy about it. She’d spent two weeks wondering if she was going to be fired. Instead, she got called personally into Tony Stark’s office. In that moment she knew that this would either be the end of her career or the beginning of it. She bought a new dress for the occasion. Something tasteful. Collarbone, but no cleavage. 

The meeting itself was over in less than ten minutes. In fact, Tony Stark was nothing like she’d seen on TV or from a distance at the company parties, where he’d make a cursory speech, then vanish. He was badly hungover and sported a three day stubble that aged him by a decade. His eyes were tinged pink and he had a runny nose which he kept wiping down with the back of his sleeve. He thanked her, gave her a few more files to glance over and only seemed to show the faintest flash of interest when she pointed out an algebraic error. Then he got a call for an “urgent” meeting, which Pepper supposed (and later validated) was just his secretary bailing him out of protracted discussion. She heard the thud of him putting his head on the desk as she left.

Back then she’d thought he was just sick with a nasty cold; later she would come to learn of Tony Stark’s tedious relationship with cocaine. She would also help him overcome it. But that wasn’t until a few years on. 

At least she hadn’t been fired. But given that she’d saved the company from a potentially major loss through a paperwork error, she thought he could at least have had the courtesy to look her in the eye.

That day put a damper on her motivation. She quit the late night Fridays.

When the offer came, it took her by surprise. In part because it came in the mail and in part because Mr Stark and his department had nothing to do with it. Signed personally in blue-black ink — it wasn’t just a printout — and loopy elegant handwriting the letter ended in:

_Respectfully,_

_Obadiah Stane, CFO_

She took the job as Tony’s PA.

She hated every minute of it for the first two years.

Then she coaxed Tony into rehab and, unlike the past six times, she made sure he stuck to this one. It became a little easier. That Christmas her bonus was exorbitant. It came from Tony’s personal account. She didn’t want it. He insisted. Eventually, she yielded.

She yielded a lot of things when it came to Tony over the years.

But not any more. 

She was awake now, staring at the ceiling, a half remembered dream triggering a night of reminiscing as she lay in yet another unfamiliar bed, in the unfamiliar surroundings of yet another hotel. 

She’d found it exciting at first, all the travel. But then, like everything else, it had become a chore. Living out of a suitcase. Paying rent on an apartment that she barely saw the inside of. Being constantly, always available for whatever Tony might need. On days when Happy was unavailable, she’d even stand in as the world’s most overpaid delivery driver, bringing food orders for him and his friends, mostly female, always young and pretty. 

His one night stands would look at her with bemused embarrassment as she brought their clothes back, the stains dry cleaned out. Her mother had once come to visit and taken her out for dinner, during which she’d fielded no less than ten Tony-related calls. Her mother had taken her hand across the table and, in that motherly tone of absolute finality, let her know that she was going to have a hard time finding a husband if she devoted every moment of her life to babysitting a trust-fund cokehead who made guns. 

Pepper had rejected the advice angrily. She was happy on her own. She enjoyed her job. She was fulfilled. But it took Afghanistan for her to realize what she really was, what she’d been in denial about, and why she hadn’t quit like all the other PAs before her. 

Somewhere along the line between watching him shiver his way through withdrawal, seeing how he genuinely believed that his company helped make the world a better place… between all of it and something in the middle, she’d fallen in love with her boss. 

That certainly hadn’t been in the five year plan. 

* * *

She got up and dragged herself in front of the bathroom mirror. The more she thought of Tony, the angrier she became.

Had she been so wrong about him all this time? Yes, she’d made up her mind. Yes, she wanted to leave him. But the pain of knowing what she’d lose was nothing against the pain of watching him surrender like a lamb. 

He hadn’t called her out on it, hadn’t tried to persuade her to the contrary. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. After all those years together, she was sure that she would have seen it on him if it had.

_He fell for you once, toots. Who said that was going to last forever?_

The idea made her choke. She had never doubted Tony’s feelings for her. His affection had seemed as certain as the morning sun. His ignorance and heedlessness had been hurting her -- but having to wonder whether he still loved her or not twisted the knife far worse than anything else he could possibly do.

She splashed some water on her face, took a deep breath, and forbid her mirror image to dwell on that any longer. She would ask him in the morning, she decided, before they would go their separate ways. She would know then, and that would have to be enough.

She took the glass from the sink and filled it with water. There was cold Voss waiting in the fridge, but a glass of mundane, lukewarm tap water seemed more appropriate under the circumstances. She brought it to her lips and took a sip, saving the rest for the nightstand.

On the way back to the bed she cast a forlorn glance at the door; she hadn’t locked it, just in case. Just in case Tony would make up his mind in the middle of the night and come to ask for her forgiveness. If he did that, she’d promised herself, if he came in here and begged her with all he had then--

 _Then what?_ The voice in her head asked. _You’ll let him hit the rewind button again?_

“Stop it,” she said to herself and placed the tap water glass on the nightstand.

She would not do any such thing.

After all, Pepper Potts was a woman of substance.

* * *

But then he did come, and in her light slumber she heard the door first gently open, then close again.

Eyes shut, she pretended to be still asleep. She imagined him standing over her, bitterly regretting all his sins, girding himself on how to win her back. She could feel his body heat, he was that close.

She stayed that way for the longest time, not allowing herself to look and hiding behind a veil of insincerity (and hadn’t she been doing this for years now?). She knew Tony. One wrong move and he would be gone. She forced himself to grant him this one last chance.

But he didn’t take it, and when she eventually opened her eyes they were full of anger and disenchantment -- and a moment later they were full of terror, too.

The man at her bedside was not Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, gentle reader.
> 
> Sending all our love and apocalypse survival vibes for 2021.


	39. Chapter 39

He shot out of bed faster than the sound of the bullet which woke him. There was very little thinking; what followed was more of a forebrain thing, a reactionary instinct imprinted in his mind as though it were left there by a cow brand iron.

The first move was for the attache. He didn’t have to reach far. It was parked right next to the bed, an arm’s length away. The second move was a double. A quick scan of the perimeter (there was nothing, but that could only mean they were hiding) and his thumb depressing on the biometric lock of the suitcase.

By the second shot, his brain had gone into survival mode of the deepest kind. Rationality and critical thinking were kicked overboard. They’d be located and hauled back in later. Anxiety too. That one flew in a high arc.

All the times he’d agonised over whether he’d be able to get back in a suit if it came down to it seemed ridiculous in hindsight. As Mark IV enveloped him in its kevlar reinforced fiber plates, it felt like putting on a second skin. Christ, it felt like putting on the only skin he had after running around stripped naked for years.

From there it was mostly muscle memory. He checked the self-calibration reporting on the HUD, noted that the built-in monitoring system had detected an incongruity in the left upper extremity ( _pulse discontinuous_ it read) and that the onboard UI failed to establish a connection to MAIN. _JARVIS INTERFACE UNAVAILABLE_ blinked across the HUD in uppercase red. Tony dismissed the warning. He’d have to do this one solo.

A third shot followed, but not in his room. The infrared wasn’t expressive. The scream was what cleared it up then. His heart slipped into his boot thrusters.

“No!” he yelled inside the helmet. Not her. Everything, but _not her_. 

The door was no match for Mark IV and 1402 flew right off its angles as he barreled through, first out into the hallway and then into 1401. Property damage was the least of his worries.

The scene unfolding before him was of a struggle; quick, brutal, and bloody. A red trail snaked from around the corner where the bed was, smeared up the inlay-carpet up to where it morphed into tiles (formerly beige, now crimson) and ended on the bathroom door in the form of smudged handprints. The handprints layered around the bronze doorknob. They were too small and delicate to be anyone but Pepper’s. 

_They got her,_ he heard his own voice in his head, even above the roar of his own pulse in his ears. 

His eyes settled on Them. Only it wasn’t Them. It was Him. Singular. And the sonofawhore was busy battering in the bathroom door with the butt of his rifle.

“Hey!” Tony yelled, raising both hands and holding them out like Samson about to bring down the temple. A few years back he might have annexed this with a cheesy one-liner, something that would sell in a subsequent interview. The need to talk had left him in space. And fuck if he was in the mood to joke right now.

Two repulsor bursts slammed the fucker in the side, flinging him right back into the bedroom. Tony didn’t wait. He went for the bathroom door, rattled at the blood-smeared knob, and when he found it locked -- _that’s right, why else would the guy have tried to blow it down? --_ activated the speakers and listened to his voice boom in Iron Man’s trademark tinny voice.

“Pep— open up! Can you hear me? Open up!”

There was no immediate response — _of course not! Did you see all that blood? That’s half her volume in the throw rug! —_ and he prepared to continue the task of his predecessor. He was two doors in the lead. What was a third?

But right as the repulsor charged (around eighty-seven percent) he heard her. He accredited it mostly to Iron Man’s enhanced audio. His own ears wouldn’t have been able to pick it up, and certainly not in a live-or-die moment like this one. It was faint, a blubber more than an actual word, and it spiked his terror to new heights. She was calling — crying — _gurgling_ for help.

It was 3-0 instantly. The door didn’t stand the ghost of a chance.

“Jesus— Jesus _Fuck!”_

He dropped down to his knees, clutching a towel ( _HELP US SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT BY REUSING YOUR TOWEL)_ as he went and pressed it into the crook of her neck. It soaked in the red like a sponge. She moaned and lunged out at him, but it was a weak movement and borne mostly out of instinct.

“I got you, it’s me— did he hurt you anywhere else?”

He kept the towel down firmly with one hand and began to pat her down with the other. There was a lot of blood. Her nightie was full of it. It smeared on her pale skin and stood out like ink on snow.

“Call 911,” he instructed, but a moment later realized that he was instructing thin air. Loyal, reliable JARVIS was offline, was never going to be anything BUT offline and—

—WHOOSH—

—his head cracked against the tiled bathtub as something knocked into him from behind. The HUD went black for a second. He felt Pepper’s body squirm underneath Iron Man’s weight, her hands slick with blood as she tried to press him off her.

His visuals returned, just in time with the adrenaline kick. He got to his feet, the servos whirring in response to his commands. Pep moaned, but he didn’t have time to check on her. Her assailant was back.

He got his first good look at the guy. Clad in black, shoulder-length greasy hair, some sort of biker mask concealing half his face. And serious body armor; the reason why he wasn’t crisp as fried chicken just yet.

Tony barreled into him like he was taking out a catcher blocking home. There was little to be done against Mark IV’s weight advantage. It wasn’t as bulky as the other models, but paired with the thrusters he could mow down a fucking tree at the mere expense of a bruise or two.

They landed outside the bathroom, taking out half the ante’s furnishings. Tony didn’t feel a thing, but he was willing to bet that the luggage rack hurt a good deal — especially right between the teeth. 

“Save yourself!” he yelled at her, keeping the guy pinned. “You hear me? You have to get out!”

The pinning didn’t work out for long though; certainly not long enough to allow Pepper an escape. The guy landed a fist to Tony’s throat. Now, regularly, this should have ended in bruised knuckles for his opponent. What it came down to was Tony on his hands and knees, trying to breathe around his bent-in gorget.

_Strong as a fucking bull._

And the bull didn’t miss his loophole. He straddled Tony, going straight for the RT. While Iron Man’s main energy source wasn’t a secret, this guy went about it in a way that inferred he had some form of extended knowledge. Bad news. _Really_ bad news.

Worse was that he’d gone into the fight in an unserviced suit, six years older and more out of shape than he’d been during his last knight-in-gold-titanium stint. Needless to say, it showed.

He got some hits in, it wasn’t like that. He broke the bull’s nose and probably some of his front teeth (although he couldn’t be sure on the magnitude of his win with that stupid bandana in place). But he wasn’t the ring leader in this, clearly. The suit helped in avoiding a straight out KO, but it was obvious that the other side wasn’t playing clean. Tony wasn’t an expert in PEDs, but there had to be some strong shit going on here. Maybe not Captain America level of shit — but close.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye and risked the distraction. A hand around the bathroom doorframe. She was clawing her way out of theeeeeeeeeeee—

“Uggh!”

His hand clasped around the assailant's. Even through the gauntlet he felt it, sticky and hot. He groaned. The in-built monitoring read _WARNING: PERFORATION DETECTED._

 _Perforation alright,_ he thought. He felt like he had been impaled with a table leg. All of his left side pulsed with pain as he heaved. The bull noticed, took advantage and with what Tony imagined was a malicious snarl behind the bandana, he pushed and twisted whatever he had stuck between Iron Man’s plates further in.

For a moment his vision spun so badly he wasn’t sure where up or down was. In the next, the bull’s weight was off him. It took longer to realize what was happening, precious seconds gifted to his opponent.

The bull rolled off him, was struggling to go from hands and knees to vertical. He had turned away from Tony and _that_ was when Tony’s sense of coherence came back like a boomerang. The bull was looking out at the ante and the bathroom door, and the head of strawberry blonde (crimson) which had appeared in their view.

“No way! _”_ Tony hollered, grabbed his ankle and locked down the gauntlet. The repulsor was almost full on the charge bar and he’d fire it off the instant it reached 100%. Enhancement or not, that leg would be pulverized.

A kick caught him straight in the faceplate, then a second, but he didn’t let go. Blood was trailing down his side, down his leg, and when the third kick came, he had an odd thought: _Don’t let her know you pissed yourself._

One thing worked, though. The bull’s attention was back on him, unfettered. Tony pulled the leg out from under him, flipped him, and worked his way on top. He had a sudden and all encompassing urge to find out what was under that mask— and how it would looked sprayed across the walls once he took a repulsor beam to it.

“Get out!” he yelled, but couldn’t spare a glance to see if she did. If she was even capable of it at this point. God, he needed to get help. He needed to draw attention to—

With a force that superseded Cap’s (and Tony should know, having enjoyed the privilege once) the bull lifted him clean off his feet and kept him in a lockgrip, as though all of Iron Man’s bulk didn’t weigh more than a feather. Tony wrapped his own hands around the bull’s… and found the answer for the man’s superhuman strength: his left arm, from shoulder to fingertip, was solid metal.

“ _Sdaisya,”_ the bull said.

“Up yours,” Tony retorted, risked one more glance at Pepper (why wasn’t she moving faster?) before locking both gauntlets and activating the boot thrusters.

They went through the window, and out into the night.


	40. Chapter 40

The idea on ‘racing against time’ is that one is usually pitched against a deadline and tries to beat it in order to gain a reward or avert an unwanted consequence.

The trouble with Steve’s scenario was that he had no way of knowing when his own countdown reached zero; Virginia Potts could still be entertaining the press with a riveting interview about the spirit of charity… or she could be lying face down in her own blood while the media vultures circled the murder scene.

Steve reached the outskirts of Novi Grad well after midnight. It had been a long drive to the Maximoffs’ and an even longer run back. He was breathing hard. He’d pushed himself. He hoped that it would not be to his detriment when — if — he finally encountered the Winter Soldier.

The town was quiet, as it was bound to be at this time of the evening, and only gradually did it stir with nightlife as he progressed toward the city center to the town hall where the event was held.

“Gone,” a woman informed him as he inquired about the Starks. She was holding on to a placard depicting Tony’s face inside of a crossed-out circle. Next to it she’d written something in Cyrillic which Steve couldn’t read. Luckily there was a translation beneath it, big enough for the cameras to pan in on for the news reports undoubtedly covering the event. It read ‘BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS’ and was one of the less colourful ones standing firm even at this late hour.

“Do you know where they’ve gone?” he asked her.

“Ritz-Carlton,” said the lady as though this were general knowledge. “Tverskaya street. But don’t go. Security is there. They arrest protestors.” She looked him up and down, probing. Her voice turned condescending. 

“Even Americans.”

* * *

He saw it long before the sirens could wail and the blue lights could flash; maybe a camera lens was quick enough to catch it but as it later turned out, The Fall, as the media would dub it, remained unrecorded save for the memory of those who’d witnessed it first hand (and of those only few would live to share the tale.) 

But of course, Steve had no way of knowing that as he ran through the old town of Novi Grad. He was still enlisting a not to be underestimated amount of hope at the time.

He saw (and heard, thanks to the serum) the Ritz Carlton’s top floor window shatter outwards, and while he was still too far away to make out details, his mind readily supplemented the particulars that his eyes couldn’t pick up.

There was red and gold amid the crystal explosion of the window.

Iron Man.

But he wasn’t alone and it wasn’t a normal take-off. He wasn’t flying. He was falling.

And with him, dark as the night, was another.

* * *

He didn’t hear them land, although his ears were primed to take in the dull thud of impact; sharper for the rigid metal armor, more muffled for the adversary in its grip.

What he did hear — a good minute after the fact — were the gunshots and the screams. Those he did not need superhuman senses for. All around him lights went on, roller blinds were being lifted, sleepy but curious faces poking out to observe the disaster.

Steve ran faster.

* * *

When he arrived, the sound of sirens had caught up with him, although he was the only one on scene at this point.

Those who had been here before had either fled, or failing that, were lying on the cold Sokovian asphalt, drenching it red. The shooting had stopped. Not, as Steve had hoped, because the aggressor had been neutralized, but simply because there was nobody left to shoot at.

“Bucky…” he whispered. 

There was no joy in this reunion.

* * *

It wasn’t a reunion for Bucky anyway.

Bucky was a changed man.

Bucky might not have been a man at all.

Not any more.

* * *

“ _Sdaysa,”_ commanded the Winter Soldier, one arm around Steve’s throat, the other only tightening the deadlock. Steve struggled to worm out of his grip, and that alone paralyzed him with fear. He wasn’t supposed to struggle. Against aliens, sure. Against Tony’s enhanced robotic armor, yes. But against another human?

And Bucky was injured. The fall hadn’t been forgiving on him. He should barely be able to stand, let alone give Captain America a run for his money.

“Bucky, it’s me!” he squealed, the last of his hope turning to panic.

But that too began to fade.

His gaze became wide and dark. In it was the stupidly serene look of the deeply drugged or the cataclysmically wounded.

And then Bucky let go.

* * *

“You bastard,” Tony was saying through his suit’s voice filters. The filters must have been damaged in the fall. He didn’t sound like he was speaking; it was more of a cross between a screech and a mewl.

Or maybe it was just that, Steve thought groggily, the oxygen taking its time refeeding his brain cells.

Iron Man was now towering above the Winter Soldier, more write-off than pinnacle of robotic engineering. Tony had Bucky’s head between his hands. The best Steve could see, he was trying to gouge Bucky’s eyes out.

And he was doing quite a good job at it.

Steve got up, evaluated the situation with as much of a clear head as he could, and then set into motion.

He rammed Tony with the force of a freight train.

* * *

“ _WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU FUCKING IDIOT?!”_

Tony had retracted his helmet. He was hollering now. He was off the rails. His eyes swam with tears of pain and humiliation, but there was something else in them as well — a rage so deep and deadly that Steve recoiled from it.

“Tony—”

“That guy is a dead man, Steve. A. DEAD. MAN!”

And off they went, an unwilling threesome of flesh, blood and gold-titanium alloy.

* * *

Tony won, but only barely, and largely owed to his propensity to tax himself and his equipment well and beyond the limits of human endurance.

The set-up was as follows: Steve, on his knees, a good ten feet away from the other two. It wasn’t injury that kept him at distance; it was Tony holding a gun to the Winter Soldier’s head. Bucky was not fighting this. Tony had shot out both of his kneecaps before training the pistol against his temple. His legs had buckled like cooked spaghetti.

They had gathered quite an audience by this point. Civilians, law enforcement, first responders. A circle had been formed and the audience waited eagerly for the finale. Nobody dared to intervene. There was some humdrum going on in the background; sirens, roadblocks, evacuations, but little of that penetrated their private bubble.

“Tony. Be reasonable.”

“Reasonable!” Tony yelled. He spat a mouthful of blood on the street. A pool of the stuff had formed around his feet. Some of it undoubtedly belonged to Bucky, but from the way Iron Man swayed, Steve was certain that Tony hadn’t come away unscathed either.

“Are you going to feed me some bullshit about how he didn’t mean to kill them?” He nodded off to the side where the corpses still lay in full display. “You shoot a person in the head, what else are you trying to do? _Wake up,_ Steve! _THIS_ is the bad guy!”

Then Steve said something which he’d internalized over years and years… but which he realized now had rotted from concern to obsession — and was the reason for the deaths of dozens. Dozens today. But how many in the past? And how many yet to come?

He said it anyway. He said it with the vocal backdrop of the audience gasping.

“Tony, he’s my friend.”

“And she... was mine,” Tony answered, and there was no uncertainty left then on the matter of whether Steve had come in sufficient time or not. “But he took her. All of them. Pepper, my mom, even…” He twitched the last word away, like he couldn’t bring himself to mention Howard, even now. Even at the end of it all.

The suit’s visor dropped.

Steve shot up, but in vain.

Tony’s finger depressed on the trigger.

It was over too quick, too soon and brutally anticlimactic.

It should have filled at least a dozen pages in a book, Steve thought, yet the moment stretched out no longer than a split second. 

James Buchanan Barnes dropped like a stone. From the left eye up, he was mostly spray and gristle.

“It’s over,” Iron Man proclaimed solemnly, retracing the smoking gun.

The audience clapped and cheered. 

For them it was just another superhero spectacle.


	41. Chapter 41

What came next came in a blur and overrode what little independent he thought he had left. Contrary to his principles (he had played out this scene in his mind’s eye before and could have sworn with conviction on his actions) he did not stay with Bucky. He didn’t even get close to Bucky, or that which was left of him. 

Later, he would tell himself it could have been any man dead on that street. Maybe it hadn't really been him, his one time best friend, kept alive for the better part of a century, his brains sprayed across the tarmac before Steve could even search his eyes for a hint of recognition. The uncertainty of Bucky's fate had haunted him until now, but now he took refuge in it. James Buchanan Barnes had died on that train, all those years ago. Anything after that was just an epilogue he didn't want to read.

He waited, idle, until police secured the scene. The fallen were checked in vain for signs of life (although nobody felt for Bucky’s pulse), weapons were pointed at the ones still standing (him and Tony) and, after ensuring that neither of them would put up any resistance, a form of tense truce was declared.

“Did you send anyone up?” he heard Tony demanding. “He shot her. That sonofabitch shot her.”

The officer reassured that they had. An ambulance was taking Virginia Potts to the city hospital as they spoke. He did not have additional information on her condition, however.

“Someone get me a car,” Tony insisted. “I’ll find out myself.”

“Mr Stark?”

The cop nodded to the puddle of blood Tony was standing in. He had moved away from the Winter Soldier (a crime scene tape was already being passed around) but the red stuff was still leaking out of him like he was a sieve.

Tony blinked down at himself, staring somewhat curiously and Steve recognised a man in shock when he saw it. “You know what? Make it a blue light, will you? And hand me a phone. I need to make some calls before I pass out.”

* * *

After Tony rode off in a whir of blue and red with the sirens of the ambulance heralding his departure, a convoy of familiar black SUVs parked just outside the roadblock. Steve didn’t need to see a badge to know who they were. Brock Rumlow waved at him from a distance.

The takeover was short and curt. Rumlow’s people flashed their authorization, produced a big plastic haversack and bagged and tagged what was left of the Winter Soldier.

When they were done, Rumlow came up to Steve.

“Why don’t you ride with me, partner? We can shoot the shit, pretend it’s still… how’d you’d phrase it... the horse n’ buggy days. At least until we get there. What’d you say?”

What could he say? His time to run had passed; he’d chosen to stay, pressed by grief or guilt or both. By now the place was swarming with militia. He could have fought his way out, that wasn’t it. But watching the SHIELD agents mop Bucky’s blood off the flagstones before it had even turned cold, all of his impulse to run dissolved. There had been enough bloodshed for one day. 

He went quietly.

* * *

“Rogers?”

He looked up. Maria Hill stood in the door, holding on to a stack of papers. She let herself in, spreading the files on the table.

“You need to sign these.” She held out a pen. “Here.”

Steve took it and placed it on the table. He looked mistrustfully at Hill. Two weeks had passed since his detention. He was so accustomed to them showing up with video cameras and lie detectors that he was wary now of being faced with paperwork. Especially paperwork titled CONDITIONS OF RELEASE.

“I need your initials in all places highlighted,” Hill went on, unfazed by his apparent skepticism. “There’s quite a few, so you better get going. A full signature at the end.”

“I won’t sign these,” Steve said defensively. “Not until you tell me what happened with the Winter Soldier. And Bruce. And Tony.”

“I can’t tell you anything. Not until you sign these. The second part’s an NDA, by the way. If you violate it, the non-pursuance agreement is null and void.”

“The what agreement?” Steve asked, now taking the stack of papers and beginning to leaf through them. He skimmed over them mostly; he didn’t understand lawyer talk, looking for a revealing phrase or other that would tell him what this was all about. He found one towards the end.

He showed it to Maria Hill. “What does _he_ have to do with this?”

But she merely shrugged. “Signatures first, Steve. It’s how it works.”

Gritting his teeth, he signed without reading further. Hill supervised this with an inscrutable expression. When he was done she took the forms from him and checked them again for completion.

“That should do,” she said at last. “Please, follow me.”

“And the answers?”

“Not from me, Cap. I’m merely the front desk assistant.”

* * *

They walked out back to where the driveway was. A large sedan was waiting, the engine running. Nick Fury stood to one side of it. When Steve and Hill emerged he was just done shaking hands with a man whose back was turned to them, but whom Steve recognized anyway.

“Oh, finally,” Tony said with a smile. “Here I was thinking you’d stood me up. You didn’t tell them any delectable secrets, did you?”

“No… but what’s going on here?” Steve asked.

“Nothing to stoke up a fire,” Tony said. “I just happened to drive past and thought, hey, why don’t I pay my favorite shady government agency a visit?”

“Don’t overplay your hand, Stark,” Fury said. “Just get the hell out of here.”

The smile on Tony’s lips disappeared, but only briefly. He nodded to Steve, then the car. “Hop in. You go around though. I’m still in convalescence and I’m not supposed to overdo it.” Then he turned to Fury and Hill. “Nick, Maria, I hope to fuck I won’t ever see you again.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Fury growled back. “Now get going before I need to have you removed from the premises.”

Steve didn’t need a second prompt. He figured going with Tony was a better deal than staying with SHIELD in any case. He went around the sedan and got into the back seat. Up front sat two men in suits and sunglasses. The one riding shotgun had a semi-automatic on his lap. The car was probably bulletproof too.

Tony got in beside him, pulled the door shut and tapped the back of the driver’s. “Let’s go, Hogan. We don’t want to overstay our welcome. And pull that partition up, will you?”

They waited for relative privacy, then Tony let out a groan and let his head sag back against the headrest. “My back’s still killing me, you know. Your schoolyard buddy cost me a kidney. The rehab’s a bitch, I’ll tell you, and I’m a pro at rehabs.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. Should he apologise on Bucky’s behalf? But hadn’t Tony settled the bill on that already? Offer sympathy? Yeah, that would go down well. He decided to venture into more perilous territory.

“How is Ms Potts?”

“Well, for one, she’s not part of the deal you just signed. And unless you want to go back staring at the walls, we’ll keep her out of it. Okay?”

“Okay.” 

It sounded like a fair deal.

“Good. I think we can both agree that I didn’t come to pick you up just because I’m big on carpooling. Your bud I couldn’t do anything for. He was the last mark of a dead equation. They erased him. Kosvinsky, too.”

Steve frowned. “You know about Siberia?”

"I know enough to be a pain in Fury’s ass,” Tony said. “A big pain. I’ve got everything that Bruce had, and a good deal more. All the dirty laundry on SHIELD. And Hydra. Or Shydra, if you’re into mashups. Although I doubt they’ll use that on TV. It’s not spooky enough, don’t you think?”

“You went public?” Steve asked, shocked at the notion that Tony had finally seen the light.

But Tony only shook his head. “See, that’s why you’re never going to be the one holding the whip hand. Publicity is beyond debate, at least at this point. Remember that NDA you signed? That wasn’t just for show. If you call up the Daily Bugle tomorrow morning, you’ll find yourself in state prison by lunch.”

“I don’t…?”

“Follow? Yeah, I figured as much. You’re not exactly Quiz Kids material, bud, no offense. Let me lay it out for you in easy: I’m done. That stint at the Ritz was my last grand act as Iron Man, and I’ll have to agree with the press on one thing... it was a bad follow-up. Nothing will ever top Manhattan in their eyes, and frankly, neither in mine. But I needed my marbles shaken to see that, and I guess your pal Barnes was the only one getting through to me in the end.”

From the pocket of his coat he produced a small hard drive. A familiar hard drive.

“Guess who little red ran to for help once you’d dumped her and her dumbass brother? What she did with J… I won’t say I approve of it, but it opened pathways I could never have dreamt of. You’ll find enough reading material on here to keep you up for a few late nights. Her deets are in there too, and she wrote you an idiot-proof tutorial on how to get in touch with her. Just open the ReadMe file. Double clicking is in your repertoire by now, right?”

Steve ignored the dig. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m not a hero,” Tony said. “And it's taken me a very long time to accept that.”

“But I am?”

“My dad thought you were. America thinks you are. I’m just pinning the tail on the donkey. It’s as much of an olive branch as I can give you, I’m afraid.”

Steve nodded.

“And SHIELD?”

“They’ll leave me alone. I’ll blow my whole fortune spreading the shit on them otherwise. They won’t touch you either, at least not until you go after what Wanda dug up. After that, you’re on your own. But you’ll get by, I figure.”

Steve figured he was right. One way or another, he would get by. It was what he did. And he had come too far to quit now. Too many people had died for him to keep silent, above all Bucky. And…

“What about Bruce?”

Tony blinked. “Are you psychic now? I was about to get to that.”

“You know where he is?”

Now Tony was solemn. “Unfortunately, I think I might. But there’s nothing I can do for him. I have no more ties to the military, you see.”

“He’s in custody?”

“He’s with Thunderbolt Ross, yeah. Charming man, I don’t think you’ve met.”

They had though. Of course, Tony couldn’t know that, having just commenced with his second year in space when Thaddeuss Ross had superseded General Pierce and initiated the Santa Monica protocol. And they all knew the consequences that mission had carried in its wake, Bruce most of all.

Bruce, who’d stayed behind at the Maximoff cottage to hold off SHIELD so they could get away.

He asked the million-dollar question.

“Is he… human?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Cap. I can tell you where he is. The formalities you’ll have to sort by yourself.”

“And where is he?”

Now Tony laughed bitterly, then shook his head. “Turns out all roads really do lead to Rome, Steve. They took him back.”

“Back? Back where?”

“The ship, of course. It’s not what it used to be -- time changes everything, doesn’t it? -- but the brass got their hands on it after Fury flogged it to them. They did some fixing-upping and revamping or so I’ve heard, and supposedly it ain’t your old flying saucer anymore. It’s a home for bad boys and girls, way out off the coast, some Supermax floating prison in the middle of the Pacific. Rumour has it that Ross had it built for the baddest of the bad -- freaks, aliens -- and of course our big green friend.”

Steve’s jaw was set. “How do I get in there?”

Tony held up his hand. “Whoa, stick it back in the holster, pal. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I can’t get involved in this, do you understand? That’s what I got you out for, to do the right thing. Oh, and Steve? One more thing.” 

“Yes?”

“Keep my parents out of it. I deleted everything associated to them, but there’s a chance you’ll find more. You’ll destroy that information, instantly. You won’t talk to anyone about it. Especially me. Got it?”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it again. He debated whether now was the moment to tell Tony about Howard. Then he looked at Tony, long and deliberating, and decided that not everything needed to be shared. 

“Got it,” he said eventually.

“Great,” Tony said, leaned forward, and pressed the comms button.

“Take the next exit, Hap.”

Steve contemplated the hard drive in his hands, wondering what secrets were waiting for him.

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t make it weird.”

The car came to a stop.

Tony nodded to the door.

“End of the line, Cap. All out.”

Steve climbed out.

“It’s around two-hundred miles to Phoenix,” Tony said. “Stretch your legs a bit, how about? And Cap?”

“Yeah?”

Tony threw him something. Steve caught it. It was a bottle of Smartwater.

“Stay hydrated.”


	42. Epilogue

She thought that she’d understood before. Now, having lived it, she realized that there was a lot more to it than the flashbacks and nightmares and cold sweats. She’d stood by while Tony had gone through it and watched him stumble from the sidelines. But until that night she’d never seen the minutiae of what he’d had to overcome… or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to look so closely. It was different now, standing before a mountain of her own and not seeing a way to conquer it.

The physical recovery, although long and draining, hadn’t been the hardest part. Tony had come off much worse than she had, although she hadn’t learned that until later. She’d been on a plane back to the States while he’d still been under the knife. For her, the events of that night had left a scar, small and round, just below the collar bone. Despite everything, she had come away with all of the mobility of her left arm and both her lungs intact. She had been lucky, the doctors said. Simple as that. She could have just as well bled out in that bathroom while Iron Man had dueled it out. If the staff hadn’t come to investigate the ruckus (far sooner than the official authorities had been on scene) then she could have just as well lain in an open coffin now instead of admitting herself into a private clinic with the explicit request not to receive any visitors. Not her mother, not the company, and certainly not Tony.

She needed time to heal, and her body would take care of the physical aspect from here on out. The other part was what she needed to focus on. If Tony had taken similar help, things might not have fallen so badly to pieces. She didn’t want to take the same turn as he had now that she had come to that junction in the road. There was no shame in reaching out for a helping hand… but all the help didn’t make the road less rugged. 

Her dreams came in flashes of steel and the cold sensation of a metal arm closing around her throat. It didn’t always belong to the shadow man. Sometimes it was Tony’s, and that scared her the most. She began to panic about the little things, sublimating the big things because they were hard to define and harder to articulate. Things like loss and fear and getting older. Things like loneliness and the terror of being lonely.

Nevertheless, she took her therapist’s advice and eventually had Tony’s name removed from the off-limits call sheet. She hadn’t talked to him since admitting herself to the clinic, a brief call declaring her agenda and asking him, quite straightforwardly, to take up the slack where the company was concerned. He’d said yes… and even through the phone she could tell he had wanted so say a great deal more than that. But she hadn’t been ready for it.

And she didn’t know if she was now. But by the Tuesday evening session she had made the arrangements and Tony’s number was off the auto-block. In hindsight, the timing had been deplorable. She hadn’t considered the fact that Tony would likely not bother her this late, hadn’t factored in the time zones, and the idea of picking up the phone herself and dialing his number seemed like an insurmountable task.

She went to bed tense as a bowstring, unable to catch a wink of sleep during the entire night. She lay there, wet and sticky on the outside, parched and full of phantoms on the inside. The way she’d waited for him that night at the hotel.

Tony called the very next day. It turned out he had been calling every day from the moment she’d checked in.

“I thought they were rerouting me to their legal department,” he said, audibly surprised when it was her that picked up. Then, in a much gentler tone, “How are you? Are you holding up okay?”

“Yes,” she said automatically, paused, then rectified the lie. “I’m working on it.”

Him, careful: “Sounds like a start.”

Her, equally timid: “How are-- how’s the company?”

“It’s fine.” And after a moment, laughing: “I’m working on it.”

For Tony, this was new ground, managing it all. He had a long and convoluted history of being cleaned up after and managed himself rather than being on the enforcing side. But he seemed to be doing well and, more importantly, he seemed to do it without resentment. 

He’d drawn most of the media fire so that her involvement in the incident remained secondary. The Winter Soldier footage had been strategically leaked. Iron Man and Captain America fighting side by side again had played well with the public, pushed SI stock up by a few points, although Steve himself was dust in the wind by this point. Nobody looked too closely for the damsel in distress. Her part was merely supporting, negligible. This was a superhero story. It was about Tony’s redemption, not her sacrifice.

It took a while before she was able to ask about Bruce. She found that she really didn’t want to know what had become of him, but her therapist had plenty to say on the subject of avoidance, so eventually she posed the question. Tony kept it short. She didn’t need to know, and something or other about plausible deniability. But the lack of answer was answer enough.

Tony continued to call regularly. Some calls she would answer, some she’d let ring. She didn’t want them to fall into their old routine. She was careful. She was also a little afraid. Of the future, and of making the same mistakes over.

Eventually, they sold the company. She sent Tony her procuration, which summed up her involvement in the deal. He didn’t specify the details to her — that he was getting rid of Stark Industries way below market value, that the public response was anything but rosy and that the press had a field time picking them apart — but that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

She’d doggedly kept SI going because it had belonged to him, because he’d entrusted it to her, because it was his legacy. She’d pushed and pushed because it had been all she had left of him. Then he’d come back and Stark Industries had been all that had been left of his old life (of THEIR old life), so she’d doubled down. But had she ever really wanted to be CEO of a tech conglomerate? Maybe, once. In a fleeting wild dream when she’d changed her major that day. 

But the reality was grinding, crushing, endless.

When she thought about the climb ahead, the work it would take to get back on top of the podium, she just felt exhausted, like she was wading waist deep in water without a shore in sight. She thought of conference calls and meetings, of being chained to her phone 24-7. She realized that an attempt on her life had been the closest thing to a break she’d had in far too long a time.

Signing her letter of resignation felt as freeing as it did awkward. She dropped it in the postbox like a greetings card and waited for the confirmation to come, rather archaically, per mail. Legal and professional fees skyrocketed that month, but that didn’t bother her. They were still billing Stark Industries.

* * *

She didn’t know when she’d made the decision, but moving back to California or even New York seemed as unimaginable to her as life beyond the grave, and the idiom hit home harder than she would have liked.

When she communicated this to Tony he didn’t object. Their relationship status was still in the air. He hadn’t gone forward with her plea the night of the attack to publicize their uncoupling and the media, apart from the usual few suspects, had mostly left them unbothered in that regard. Nearly dying had bought some respite on the love front. Tony hadn’t pushed either. She suspected he was as afraid of her answer as she was herself.

_But has it changed? Didn’t you want to toss him a moment ago?_

Yes. No. The more she imagined a life without Tony the less it appealed to her. Equally, she was overcome with trepidation whenever she thought of returning to where they’d been before. A life in the trenches. She realized she kept waiting for some strong feeling that would point her in a direction -- jealousy or loss, even habitual craving -- but none came. 

A fresh start was what she needed, so she pushed any considerations of her love life away like a bothersome fly. By week’s end, she’d found what she wanted. She’d always been a city girl, the louder the buzz, the better the day, that kind of thing, and she’d never seen herself not being in the midst of it all. 

Funny how perspectives changed.

* * *

With the wind in her hair, doubt gnawed at her like termites. What had gotten into her? What had prevented her from getting a driver, or taking her own car like a normal person? But no. She’d called Tony. Tony, would you pick me up? By the time she’d processed those six words it had been too late to take them back. Of course he’d come.

She watched him intently now as the road opened up in front of them. He looked aged, but not older. There were grey specks in his hair and goatee, and crow’s feet around his eyes. The further they got from the city's edge, the more he seemed to relax, the breeze ruffling his hair, the first hint of a smile on his face. Boys and toys, she thought, and Tony had always loved his.

_And you? What do YOU love?_

Him? Still? Again?

Leaning back, she took her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on.

* * *

As the car pulled up in the drive and, as she looked at the wooden porch and the path leading to the expanses of garden, she couldn’t see a trace of the past. The shore of the lake was as clean as sifted flour. The sharp, sweet smell of fir encompassed her. It felt like the clean slate she’d dreamed of for longer than she could bear to look back on.

This felt like she could breathe again.

She turned the front door key in her hand, feeling the weight of it. Between iris scanners and facial recognition and handprint locks, it had been so long since she’d actually lived somewhere that could be opened with a normal key.

The lock turned easily, but she still paused on the threshold. It wasn’t that she was afraid to go in. She wanted this future as much as she wanted to believe that her happy ending lay on the other end of the doorstep.

She just wasn’t sure if she wanted it alone.

She turned around. Tony stood by the car, attentive but not obtrusive. He looked worried, the way a parent might worry on their kid’s first day at school. She felt both affection and irritation at the thought, but couldn’t seem to decide what to stick with.

She said it anyway, terrified half to death.

“Will you come in with me?”

“I will,” he said, unsteady, relieved, hopeful. Then he quickly added, “Only if that’s what you want.”

She let the question hang. She looked to the house, back to Tony, out to the lake. She tried to look into her heart, beneath the scar the shadow man had left there. 

“Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, over 300,000 words, three and a half years and one pandemic later, we’ve finally reached the end of our saga.
> 
> We’ve been RPing and writing together for more than a decade, but this is by far the longest and most complete project we’ve ever worked on. It started life in 2017 as an RP over Skype with the idea of “hey, what about Iron Man, but make it Dead Space” and from there grew over hundreds of thousands of words, countless drafts and redrafts, multimedia, concept art, puzzles, as well as a ton of different directions, arcs and endings and a million AU’s of the original AU. 
> 
> What we put out here on Ao3 is probably a fraction of how much we actually wrote for this universe, but we think it’s our best work to date and we’re really proud of it. 
> 
> We’re also so grateful to everyone who has followed this story, either from the beginning or just jumping along for the ride. We appreciate every hit, bookmark, kudo and comment so much. We love this fandom and we love you guys for nerding out with us along the way.
> 
> We’re still writing, still Marvel-obsessed and can’t wait to show you guys what we’re planning next, but for now, it’s goodbye and thank you. Until next time. 
> 
> Chaed and spacelaska


	43. BTS / Deleted scenes / Outtakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, some unused stuff. There's plenty more, but we don't want to clog up the archive. If any of those AUs spark your fancy, let us know and we might polish it up for proper publication.

( _a ‘Steve-wins’ ending, which we decided was too dark to run with)_

With the helmet half off, his fingers slipped between the flesh of Tony’s neck and the metal that covered his throat.

His hands were on either side of Tony’s head the other he dragged in shallow gasps of air, fingers clawing at the dirt and rocks beneath his grasp. Tony’s eyes were wide and brown and they really were... they really were just like Howard’s in a certain light.

A moment later, one of those rocks was half buried in Tony’s skull.

* * *

_(and its aftermath)_

She didn't remember his skin ever being that colour. When she'd picked him up from that desert facility, she'd thought over and over again that he looked like death, but she couldn't have been more wrong. Profoundly grey and smeared with yellowing iodine from where they nurses had tried to clean scratches and lacerations that were never going to heal now. That would never have the chance to heal. In every variation of every possible imagined future from now until the day she died, she would see him with a scar on his temple. 

They'd allowed her a moment. He wasn't going anywhere, not now and not ever again. She sat and willed him to open his eyes... and when he didn't, she pulled the lids back with her fingertips. She wanted to see them again, brown and wide and bursting with life. But the whites were gone, replaced with red of burst vessels, and his eyes were as dead as everything else behind them.

His lips were slack around the tube lodged in his mouth, held there with straps and tape, forced down his throat where a machine pushed air into his lungs. He'd been barely breathing on his own when they'd found him. His spinal cord was severed in two places. 

They called it “pulling the plug” in common parlance. In reality, it wouldn't be as instantaneous as just switching off a machine. They would carefully disconnect him from everything. She didn't have to watch while they did it, they assured her. And then, free from tubes and wires, they'd let his body do what it was already trying to. Die.

They could give him drugs if he sounded like he was in any distress, but he wouldn't be aware of what was happening. They didn't know how long it would take. Sometimes people slipped away quickly, other times they held on for hours, maybe a day. It was important for her to remember that even if it seemed for a spell like he was clinging to life, that she mustn't get false hope. There was only one outcome here.

When you're ready, they said. What kind of statement was that, anyway? Did anyone ever come out of a room like this and say 'I'm ready'? Nobody would ever say such a thing.

When hours had passed and nurses put their heads around the door with gentle, sympathetic expressions, when doctors came and talked her through it all with the answer unchanging, when the sunlight outside the window faded to orange and then to darkness... then she came out, eyes red rimmed, and said exactly that.

* * *

_(Tony hosting the Winter Soldier in his basement)_

There was a grunt from the back and Tony turned.

“Finally,” he said. “Almost flipped your brains sunny-side up with that tazer. Should’ve killed ya, but didn’t.” He narrowed his eyes, tapped the flat head screwdriver against the workbench he leaned against. “You got a name, super man?”

If he did, he didn’t let on. The guy was as still as a wax statue in a Madame Toussauds. He didn’t even blink. It was like having a staring match with a dog, knowing that if you just held out long enough the dog would be the one to look away first. Tony felt like the damn dog. He spun the flat head between his fingers.

“You mute or something? Parlez-vous français? Hablas español? Italiano? Deutsch?”

He shot up from his spot by the workbench, aiming himself decisively towards the garage espresso maker. He set a cup underneath and pressed the button. “In case you’re wondering, you’re not getting any. We have rules here in Stark household.” He turned briefly to his guest. “And I don’t serve hired goons who try to stick a hot one in the back of my head.”

Still no answer. Tony had a full repertoire of needling and pissing off to work through, but the obvious failure to rattle Mr Killjoy was pulling at his own nerves. He slurped audibly from the God shot.

“I get it. You want it teacher-up-front style. Well, you’re done in, bud. You’ve picked the wrong paranoid billionaire to lynch. Getting out of there?” Tony shook his head, then nodded to the suit-up gantry his guest was strapped into. It was designed to withstand the power of Iron Man. A mere mortal rippling his biceps? Piece of cake. Especially a mere mortal with only one biceps.

“I like your tinfoil glove. Sparkly.”

The bionic arm in question lay a triple safe distance away from the gantry. After searching the guy for weapons, detaching the prosthesis had been the first thing on Tony’s agenda. It had been a little tedious, with there being no fast release in-built, but by the end of a pull-and-hack approach Tony’d decided there was no harm in being a little rough in disassembling it. It wasn’t as though the guy would walk out of here with two intact arms. Tony wasn’t sure if he got to walk out of here at all. That was yet to be decided.

“Verdict pending,” he said out loud. There was, as anticipated, no reaction.

He put the empty cup down.

“So you’re one of those slow ‘n low dudes. That’s all right, I’m a patient fellow. The Stark grit. Folks say my old man passed it down on me. I know how to give you a hard time, pal.” His lips set in a thin line. “I got to experience it first hand.”

* * *

_(cue Bruce)_

He turned back to Bruce, all irk and desperation. “Look I didn't call you for teatime I need you to put him OUT or I’ll start singing the loco here my heart’s bustin out my ears and that guy doesn't even have a headache from it all and where’s the tranq gun, you left it upstairs?”

Okay.

Bruce was starting to piece together a picture. Someone had showed up at Tony's house and tried to kill him. Tony had imprisoned the guy and, for some godforsaken reason, decided to interrogate him instead of calling the cops. Tony was now going slowly mad on a cocktail of uppers and sleep deprivation.

Great. Five minutes back in Tony's company and Bruce had somehow found himself offering to aid and abet a kidnapping. So much for getting his life back on track.

“I don't have a tranq gun, Tony,” he repeated. “That is actually not something people just carry around with them.”

The first order of business, he decided, was getting Tony coherent again. Feed him a couple of sleeping pills and let him sleep off whatever was in his system. Bruce couldn't do much with him strung out and incoherent.

“If I promise to watch this guy,” he offered and he realised that the warning voice in the back of his head was back. “Will you get some sleep?”

* * *

_(the original and much weirder version of Pepper finding Tony jerking off to Captain America porn)_

Before Tony could say anything else, she grabbed a mostly-clean shammy from a nearby workbench and tossed it to him, letting him clean himself up and make himself decent as a way of stalling the inevitable. She sat down beside him and took the bottle of scotch from the table and took a long, hard swig. She fucking hated scotch but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do in that moment.

“I found the DVD,” she said eventually and was surprised at how casual her tone was, like they were discussing an oil change on the car or being out of milk. “I watched it. Just so you know.”

The main pervading thought when she had seen it it had been 'Who even used DVDs any more?”. The CD case with the padded envelope seemed like something almost from the last century.

It had soon become very, very clear why. This was something that he couldn't share, even with Jarvis. As far as shameful secrets went, this was a doozy.

Ordering a custom porno to be shot to one's exact specifications was, in her opinion, already pushing the envelope marked 'things only creeps and weirdos do'. Ordering a custom porno featuring a Captain America lookalike being spanked to the point of tears and then fucked by a dark haired guy with suspiciously dapper facial hair was like the bottom had fallen out of her world.

She hadn't been able to watch the entire thing. Just kept skipping forward in twenty second increments, looking for something that would make it make sense. Nothing did.

Curiosity was one thing. But the custom order. The unmarked envelope. The fact that it had been delivered to a PO Box that she didn't even know existed. It was too elaborate, too planned out, too expensive to be a passing flight of fancy. 

“I’m not gay,” Tony said, very slow and very sober.

“Okay”, she said back, but what she wanted to ask was, 'Are you sure?'. Because he'd gone to an alarmingly elaborate amount of effort in terms of his Steve Rogers fantasy. In a way, it would have been much easier to understand if he'd just said 'Honey, I'm bi and I've been having thoughts about Steve'. It was hard to get her head around him swearing he wasn't attracted to men when she'd just walked in on him nutting one out to some remarkably specific gay porn.

She wondered if he really was gay and if all of this was some kind of internalised homophobia. If the whole playboy lifestyle had been him over compensating for something all along. But she decided she could at least keep an open mind on what he was saying, if not least because she didn't want it to be true.

“So...” she said slowly, because she wanted to make sure she understood exactly what he was saying. “You're not attracted to Steve. You've just been getting off on him...” She looked to the screen for inspiration. “...being degraded? Like, it's a power thing?”

She could work with that. She could work with any scenario that didn't involve Tony being a closet case and leaving her for a strapping blond.

* * *

_(excerpt from a 22k word AU with Pepper along for the ride on the space rescue mission)_

She gave a nod to Jim before they left, a silent ‘I’m okay’. Ever since Tony had died he’d looked out for her in his own special way. When he’d told her that he was taking on this mission it was as though another piece of her had chipped away, like flecks of old paint. She had to go too. She just had to.

Natasha led the way, holding the sensor like a character in one of those old science fiction movies the boys loved to watch down in Tony’s shop.

“It’s not moving,” she pointed out, watching the screen, unchanged. “Bruce must have been right. An error. This place interferes with all our tech.”

Pepper nodded. Both her and Jim’s suits were malfunctioning to a certain degree and radio signals disrupted over a certain distance. In terms of shifty coincidences as Jim was calling it, this just seemed to add to the pile.

They followed the scan for another little while when Natasha stopped in her tracks.

“I thought it was weird. Now it lists the source as human.”

Pepper craned her neck to get a better look. “I see that. But we both know Chitauri don’t take prisoners.” She pressed a finger against the dot on the screen, opening a new tab. “No details, no health stats. It could be something different hat the scanner can’t classify. It’ll revert to default in that case, which is human.”

” _Or a blip,_ ” Bruce added over radio. ” _As I was saying. Not worth the risk. Rhodes found a detour that’ll take us around both sightings. Get back here, please. Steve says that’s an order, by the way._ ”

* * *

( _a look into a super dark 45k word long detour titled ‘spacebros’ featuring so much body horror and a possibly-corrupt JARVIS)_

“Jarvis?” he called out. “Jarvis, what happened? What did you do to me? Dear God…! It would have taken just another week to heal, just a few more days!”

“A few days?” Bruce echoed. “Tony, it was a compound fracture. It had already been left for weeks. The necrosis was so extensive that there was no way--” 

But JARVIS, smooth and reassuring, cut him off. ““I can confirm that at 03.14am on March 25th 2014, your arm was amputated by Dr Banner, at Dr Banner's insistence.”

“No, hang on--” Bruce felt like he was going crazy for a moment. “You asked me to help! You agreed with the plan, you-- you showed me how to use the laser on the gauntlet, for crying out loud!”

“When it became apparent that Dr Banner could absolutely not be dissuaded from his course of action,” Jarvis continued, “I calculated that it would be safer for him to carry out the procedure with the correct tools.”

“What?!” Was JARVIS throwing him under a bus?

And now he felt like he was really losing it because an AI shouldn't be capable of lying. Or of twisting the truth. Not for no good reason, not when it would lead to more distress on Tony's part.

Had he misinterpreted the original situation? He'd just come round. He'd been stressed and disorientated. JARVIS had asked him for help and he'd assumed, given the obviousness of the situation, that meant to amputate.

There had been no other course of action.

He was seized with a sudden horror of self doubt, the urge to dig out the severed arm and examine it just to make sure that he hadn't imagined the extent of the damage. But of course, it wouldn't yield anything useful, not nearly two weeks after the fact.

Then he thought of the mask sliding shut across Tony's horrified face and he balked again.

“Tony, listen to me,” he pleaded. “Do not get back into that suit.”

* * *

_And lastly, here’s a preview of one of our two current major projects…_

  
  
  
  


**THE LAST TESTAMENT OF STEVEN G ROGERS**

a Mafia-themed AU

  
  
  
  


“This guy I don't know,” I said earnestly. “Never seen him before in my life.”

“Jesus,” Bucky muttered, apparently compelled to intervene at this point. “See, I toldya, Sarge.” He looked at Fury and then back to me again. “Stevie, that's Tony Stark.”

There was an expectant silence.

I don't think I could’ve made a worse impression if I tried to. “Who?” I asked. I had honestly never heard that name before.

Fury put his hands to his head like he wanted to beat the disappointment out of himself. “God Almighty, aren’t there no newspaper jockeys in your part of town?”

Of course there were, and Sammy Wilson carried them out six days outta seven. Sometimes he’d let me peek at the cartoons without paying and sometimes I could tickle out some sports news outta him if I felt him being chatty. But Sammy Wilson wouldn't ever tell me the front page stories if I didn't buy a copy off him. And I had a hunch that jolly Tony Stark with his trilby and his mustache was all front page material.

Fury took the guy’s picture and waved it around as though it might magically ginger up my memory.

I shook my head no. I was still drawing a blank.

“Tony Stark, the bloke from Vegas?” Bucky offered. “Big shootout, bout a year back, the Bellagio’s fountains were spurtin’ red when they was out of bullets for their tommy guns. Your pal Hogan, he was right in the thick of it too.”

Well that explained it. A year back was about the time my ma started doing real bad. I was in over my head trying to help her and keep up my shifts at Mr Erskine’s. Not a lot of time left to chew the daily rag with Sammy Wilson.

Fury kept talking. “And now this good-for-nothing’s dug into Little Sicily like a tick. I’ll smoke him out, see him run back to his desert dump with his tail between his legs. And you, sir, you’ve been stupid enough to cozy up to Stark’s favorite bruiser boy, and to hell if I ain’t gonna use that against him.”

Evidently the shock was manifesting on my face. My ma had always said I should never play poker — I was a terrible liar, always have been. Bucky caught my eye like he had a lot to say that he couldn't spill in front of the Sarge.

But this was my chance, wasn't it? A way into a career of law enforcement, a chance to help catch the bad guys. And if all I had to do was keep my ear to the ground and my eyes peeled, well that wasn't such a big ask, was it?

Fury put out his cigarette only to grab for a new one. When it was lit he took a long drag and leaned back in his chair. “For now you’ll do what you’re paid to do. Serve em, grovel, be a good little lackey. Do not—” and he said this deliberately slow, “—get any bright ideas of your own. You’ll be doin your friend here no favor by makin him pay for your funeral. If it even comes to that. Six feet under is the luckiest place you’ll end up in. Most of ‘em get swept down the Hudson until they’re bloated like squeezed cats and not even their own mothers will know to identify them on the autopsy table.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for now -- see you soon :)


End file.
